Forlorn Hope
by antepathy
Summary: You can tell right away this one's going to be an upper, can't you? IDW Sixshot/Jetfire.  Sixshot's been infected with a cybertoxin by some unhappy Reapers. Eventual slash, pnp, tactile.
1. Asteroid Station FH3

A/N Hi, welcome to yet another bizarre pairing that somehow only works in my head. Take one reticent nerdy Autobot that the other Autobots don't really trust, and one psychopathic Phase Sixer, and shazam. MAGIC!

Orrrrr, maybe not. Whatever. :P

This is sort of a screwed up angsty romance story.

[***]

Autobot Base: Designation FH-3

Jetfire readied the weapon, his thick fingers clumsy even in the open triggerwell. He could see the muzzle wobble on its bipod. He was so bad at this. He wasn't a fighter. He knew this. Everyone knew this. Which was why they gave him these rear-echelon jobs, like the quiet little research and fabrication station. It was supposed to be safe here, the front lines of battle far, far away.

Except that someone was outside, having blown through the Grade Six blast doors as though they were made of fatigued tin, having easily blow the defensive turrents. And who was now battering at the even heavier, lead-lined doors to the radioactive research room.

Jetfire risked a glance to the table on which the rifle's bipod rested. Datatracks had slipped from the neat stack he'd put them in—all the findings he'd made, vorns of research. It seemed at once somehow offensive to have all that time compressed into the files, and at the same time, a satisfying testament: Jetfire had contributed. He had mattered. He wasn't a warrior, but still. He had mattered, would matter, would maybe, one day, have his research end the war or, better yet, help consolidate the peace or brighten the future.

Even if he died, he hoped that his research would survive. That's what counted.

Another loud hiss, followed by a thoom so loud that the floor vibrated under Jetfire's feet. He braced himself, mentally more than physically.

The door buckled inward, metal crumpling. Jetfire could hear the sharp hiss as the rubber gasket seals blew, as if the door itself were in pain.

Jetfire lowered himself awkwardly. 'Make yourself a smaller target' Ironhide had told him, during his abortive 'training'. 'Decepticons will shoot you sure as any of the rest of us.' Yes, Jetfire knew that. Another reminder that they held him at arm's length. Another reason to station him far away from 'the enemy'—because they didn't entirely believe he wasn't one of 'the enemy' himself.

A cracking boom. The room plunged into darkness after a single flash of light threw an elongated silhouette into the room.

The boom echoed away into a ringing silence. Red optics glowed, malevolent beacons in the darkness. Jetfire became aware of his own optics—how they must be limning the rifle in front of him, bright blue targets. He waited, hesitated, holding back from making the first move, taking the first shot. He could hear Ironhide's voice in his cortex, howling at him to take the shot.

He was not Ironhide. Perhaps, he was not, really, an Autobot.

The red optics moved, suddenly, swinging in a long arc. Jetfire flinched back, curling one long white finger around the trigger, as the optics came for him, then, suddenly, abruptly, noisily, downward.

The mech had fallen, collapsed just on the other side of the workbench. The rifle seemed to jump from Jetfire's hands, clattering on the table as he leapt over it, barely able to think what he was doing before he did it. Did he think the mech was Starscream? He didn't know. But he'd seen red optics, and…not taken the shot. He'd rationalized that he was waiting for the Decepticon to shoot first, to obey some Rules of Engagement. Even he wasn't sure he believed it.

His optics adjusted to the dimness as he squatted by the inert form. One hand found a vertical stabilizer mounted by the shoulder frame.

The mech groaned. Jetfire could feel a shiver of pain through the panel under his palm.

"Are you injured?" He winced. Unnecessary question. Stupid question. He waited for the retort. An Autobot would ask that question, though, wouldn't he?

But why couldn't Jetfire imagine any of the Autobots he knew asking that of a Decepticon?

"Fix me." The voice was deep, gravelly, and somehow thready. A groan of metal, the mech turning gingerly over.

"I-I'm not a medic," Jetfire said. His optics, nonetheless, skittered down the damaged frame. The mech was almost his size, white armor scorched and gouged and charred, pink energon luminescing dully in his lowlight optics.

A click, and the unmistakable black eye of a pistol muzzle staring him down. "Wasn't a request."

Jetfire stared at the muzzle, waiting. My research, he thought, a chill rushing through him. That will survive. He waited. The muzzle wobbled, suddenly, the servos in the hand firing unsteadily. His optics went back to the red ones. They flickered as well, pain and something like a distant alarm warring in them. What else could he do? What if this had been Starscream? Could he turn away an injured mech? He didn't know what an Autobot would do. But he knew what THIS Autobot would do. "I'll do my best."

"…better," the voice croaked. The optics dimmed, the hand falling limp, pistol jouncing from the nerveless hand.

[***]

Sixshot felt his systems online, slowly, painfully. He didn't begrudge the pain. It was a sign he was still alive. His optics powered on, flaring in the light of emergency-generator lighting. He was alone. And able to move—his split lines repaired, armor undented, if still filthy, fuel topped off. Foolish Autobot. But…compliant. Sixshot would do him the favor of killing him quickly. His hands closed, seeking weapons, and found none.

No matter. He didn't need guns to kill. Merely opportunity.

A shadow moved in the far end of the room. "You are awake?" The voice he remembered from before, from that fever-dazed state in which he'd battered his way into the tiny base, determined to find something to slake his rising core temp. Reapers. He should have known they wouldn't accept a second refusal with good grace.

"Back off, Autobot." His voice was thinner than he liked, sounded far away. Weak. He hated it. His core temp was still high, but not, at least, redlining. His secondary and tertiary systems were on and above marginal. Improvement.

"You asked me to repair you. I had to get…rather near." The mech approached again, his white armor smirched and smudged with char and flecks of energon. Sixshot's energon.

Sixshot's optics narrowed into a glare.

The Autobot, a large flyer, holding out a small drum. "Coolant. Your systems require a flush." He stilled, waiting for some acknowledgement, permission.

Sixshot ran a quick check. Yes. His coolant was discharged and sludgy. He struggled up onto his elbows, nodding warily. His optics tracked the white fingers as they opened one of his access hatches, the touch coolly competent, hooking the coolant pump. Sixshot repressed a sigh as the cool fluid began seeping through his lines.

He felt the blue optics on him, as if waiting for something. Gratitude? Huh. He'd wait a long time for that. Not that he had that long to live.

"I tried to inform you that I am not a medic. But I did the best I could."

Sixshot grunted. He had no complaints. He was online, and the coolant was sapping the dangerous heat, building his strength, pushing him toward recovery. And then, kill this mech and then…and then the Reapers.

He felt the optics continue to search over him. His gaze narrowed. "What?"

The Autobot twitched, as if caught doing something wrong. "I-I was studying your engineering. It is…unusual."

Yes, and that was all the more reason why the Autobot had to die—in his blind pain, Sixshot had been vulnerable—this mech already had seen too much, probably had a list of his vulnerabilities. "It is."

"Oh." The blue optics flared. "I am sorry. I should introduce myself."

No. Don't, Sixshot thought. Do not try to become a mech with a name to me. Do not think it will save you.

"My name is Jetfire."

Jetfire. The name resonated dimly in his cortex. A no-kill order. Really. Intriguing. Not that it mattered. He could mission-override the directive.

The coolant system signaled that the flush was complete. Jetfire busied himself unhooking the line. "Is there anything else I can do for you? To make you more comfortable?"

The question confused Sixshot. "Comfortable?" he echoed the alien word.

"Are you in pain?" Jetfire's hands stilled, optics turning to meet Sixshot's.

Sixshot shrugged. He was always in pain. "Means nothing."

"It means your systems are not optimally functional." A strange earnestness burned behind the blue. A flash of image: the blue optics dulled and dead, spiderwebbed with cracks. Sixshot blinked and the optics were once again open and wide and blue.

Sixshot sat up, pushing the mech away. "I'm fine."

Jetfire staggered back a few paces, the drum of now-filthy coolant clutched in one hand. "I am glad to hear that," he said, unsteadily. "I did what I could." And then the question Sixshot had wanted to avoid. "Can I ask your designation?"

No reason not to answer, really. Jetfire was going to die, at Sixshot's hands. Knowing the name of the mech who killed him would hardly do any harm. "Sixshot." He felt vaguely gratified at the surprise and alarm that flashed over the light face. Yes. Fear.

Another flash, the black char on the mech's armor was not merely transfer, but the bubbled scorch of fresh injuries, the concerned tautness of the face reduced to a dead laxness. Soon, Sixshot murmured to the darkness within him.

Sixshot swung his legs over the edge of the worktable Jetfire had laid him on. His cortex whirled, his tanks roiling to one side. He clutched the edge of the table, head swinging forward, systems whitelining from too much motion.

White hands closed on his shoulders, steadying him. "I'm sorry," Jetfire said, quickly. "I must have overcalibrated the main gyroscopic input."

You're sorry, Sixshot thought, darkly, suspiciously, watching as one hand rested on his shoulder, benignly, without force, another reaching for what Sixshot recognized as a medical scanner. Sixshot stared at it, trying to stop the room from spinning by fixing his vision on the fingers, white on white.

"I can make the adjustments…if you'll let me." Pausing, waiting for permission. Again. Sixshot nodded, dully. Simply, he rationalized, because he could not function this way. And he liked the irony of killing the mech who just repaired him. Give me the capability to destroy you, Autobot.

Jetfire reached for the access panel again, leaning over. Sixshot held himself rigid, refusing to lean onto the broad shoulder for balance as the white helm lowered to his chassis. A soft laugh. "I believe you speak even less than I do."

"Nothing to say and no one to say it to," Sixshot countered, still queasy from the gyro error. Simply to be contrary.

The head tilted up. "I would imagine you have plenty to say." The blue optics were pools of sincerity. If Sixshot hadn't already had his gyros spinning, such naivete would have done it. Jetfire returned to his work. Sixshot felt the gyroscopic rheo adjust downward. His head cleared almost instantly.

"Not really."

Jetfire pulled his hands away, slowly, solicitously, holding his palms out in case Sixshot needed to grasp them for balance. "I envy you, then," he said, his voice strangely soft.

"Don't."

A long silence. Jetfire turned to put away the scanner, showing the broad expanse of his back, his wingspan, to Sixshot. Sixshot had flashes of images—tearing off those wings. He could feel the popping rivets beneath his hands, smell the ionizing energon. Turning his back was an insult, weighing Sixshot as less than a threat. Sixshot should be incensed. He should attack. What are you waiting for? Kill the Autobot.

Jetfire turned back to him, a question trembling on his lips. "Do…do you not trust them, or do they not trust you?" His hands held something—not a weapon. That was all Sixshot registered—that was all that mattered, in his world.

The question made no sense, and every sense in the world. "Both," Sixshot heard himself answering, roughly. "But loyalty doesn't demand trust."

"No," Jetfire replied. "It does not." His voice was heavy with a familiar resonance—the hollowness of a regret that could not allow itself to be said aloud. He straightened, the wings spreading wide. "I…I know you are going to kill me, Sixshot. I only ask that…," his voice cracked. Distress lightning-struck across his face at his own break. "I—I only ask that you take these. Do not let them be lost." He thrust out what turned out to be a stack of datatracks. "Please."

Sixshot took the tracks, numbly. No. This was not how it was supposed to go. Jetfire should be begging for his life. Screaming in agony. He could feel the mech's fear, but it was not the fear of the dying.

It was the despair of the dreadfully alone.

"Not going to kill you," he muttered, disgusted. Not because of the no-kill order. That…didn't bind him anyway. He laid the datatracks down.

It was worth it—almost—to see the look of confusion on the Autobot's face. "I…uh…thank you."

"Don't," Sixshot said, sourly. Another image—the blue cockpit ruptured, light glinting whitesilver from shards of glass. He could practically hear the glass's musical sobbing as it shattered, fell. His optics blinked. The voices in his cortex whispered inexorably, pushing him to action. He resisted.

"How do you cope with it? Being alone?" Jetfire asked it as if they had this thing in common. Resentment swelled in Sixshot's cortex—he and Jetfire were nothing alike. Nothing.

He knew the answer—he buried himself in missions, threw himself into combat. Seeking pain, sensation. Not for his social isolation, but for a larger alienation—that there was no one like him. No one capable of understanding who or what he was. So instead, he punished the world, punished himself, filling his days with torment, an unsated maw of isolation. "I don't."

Jetfire's rigid wings seemed to sag. "I am…sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. Not your problem." Not Sixshot's problem. No. It wasn't. Nothing compared to the flashes of atrocities waiting to be born that flashed across his cortex, the voices like a mob of dark passengers, like the spirits of the mechs he'd killed begging for more company, ghosts feeding on pain.

"Not the same way, no," Jetfire said. "I did not mean to offend you by a comparison." Not the same. At all. Sixshot would never repair another mech. Much less one he knew would kill him. Jetfire made no sense. No sense.

Sixshot tilted his head, before he realized that Jetfire had misread his statement. Not surprising: Sixshot was willing to grant that he was inept at conversation. A stupid skill. Worlds were not destroyed through words. "Not offended." He felt a strange urge rise up in him, pushing aside the roiling tide of violence. He tried to tell himself it served some purpose. Some military purpose.

What other use was there?

But when he came to put it to words, he grated at the clumsiness. Hand him a weapon and he could make devastation an art. Ask a question and…he was lost. Curiosity was lethal, was weakness. But. Did Jetfire, after all, have the answer to that as well? Could he quiet the voices, fill Sixshot with something other than singleminded murder?

"You…feel."


	2. Relapse

A/N In which Jetfire develops a painfully lame crush.

Sixshot had relapsed. Whatever cybertoxin that had afflicted him, Jetfire had failed at finding it, failed at purging it. The white shuttle felt the failure painfully, watching every spasm and writhe as though it should have happened to him, instead. It seemed unfair that Sixshot be punished for Jetfire's failing.

Sixshot's core temperature had spiked alarmingly, and Jetfire had been, for once, pleased for his own strength, that allowed him to lever the large mech—who was heavier than he seemed—off the workbench that had become an ersatz repair table, and into an equally impromptu cooling tub.

Sixshot had only groaned, then, his white hands clutching on air, gasping as the icy saline bit into his systems, dissipating his dangerous heat.

Jetfire had sat a worried vigil by the tank, monitoring the other mech's vitals. The faction marking did not matter to him, only that another mech was injured.

And, if he were completely honest, the cybertoxin intrigued him. It was something he'd never seen before. Unique etiology. Unknown course. He had done everything he could, trying to be respectful of boundaries, not to transgress too far into Sixshot's privacy.

And he found himself, sadly, strangely, talking to the half-delirious mech. At first simply telling him what he was doing, so that Sixshot would not perceive his ministrations as an attack. But then, as the cycles passed, he began talking more and more, words spilling out of him. It felt…safe somehow. Partly because he felt that here was someone who would not hate him for his doubts, would not find his prattling about his discoveries tedious. Mostly, he thought, wryly, because Sixshot likely wouldn't remember any of it.

So he told the feverish form, as he monitored the core temperature, or changed the cooling bath once again, his entire life. Why he pursued science, his more recent doubts about its purity and integrity. His hatred of war, his belief in peace, his friendship with Starscream, his admiration for Optimus, and how unrequited and hopeless he felt both his desires were. All the little inconsequentialities he had been gathering for years he poured over the Phase Sixer. And he felt foolish enough, and he knew that the odds were still not settled, that Sixshot was just as likely to kill him at any moment as before. But it felt like a relief, like a dam bursting, to get those words out of him first.

"And so," he said, "that's how I ended up here, on a research station. A-a compromise of ethics, I suppose." He leaned over to swipe an ethyl alcohol damp rag over Sixshot's face, cooling it, cleaning away some of the black smudges.

Unconscious, Sixshot was…not unattractive, Jetfire thought, and then suddenly found himself hot with embarrassment. He should not be having these thoughts. At all.

"I'm sorry," he said, quickly, apologizing to the air for his treacherous thoughts.

The optics glowed, dimly. "Don't compromise," Sixshot murmured. One hand flexed experimentally in the water.

Jetfire stiffened, his wings going rigid. "I-I am sorry," he stammered.

"Said that already." The head turned toward him, optics focusing like targeting lasers. No, they probably _were_ targeting lasers. "What for?"

"Talking so much about myself." Jetfire ducked his head. He busied himself folding and refolding his damp rag.

Sixshot shifted, rolling his shoulders in their joints, armor rippling. Liquid slopped over the tank's rim. He huffed, frustrated. "Still sick."

"I know," Jetfire said. "I've done my best to stabilize you, but to counteract the toxin I'd need access to your cortical systems and a sample of your energon. And I didn't, well…."

Sixshot snorted. "Bad idea. Deadman bomb in my cortex."

"Oh." Jetfire felt abashed. He could have, probably should have, thought of that contingency. Another reason he was not a warrior. He simply could not, try as he might, make himself think that way.

He felt Sixshot's optics on him, weighing him, measuring something he could not figure. "All right," he said. "You can have your sample and…access."

It struck Jetfire suddenly that this was the first thing he'd heard Sixshot say that didn't have some sort of negation in it. He nodded, and hurried to gather the scanner and the hypodermic, feeling a strange warmth at Sixshot's display of trust. He found himself chattering again, this time from nervousness. "Your core temperature has stabilized, finally," he reported, despite the fact that Sixshot probably already knew that. "And this might be the last of it clearing your system, but I'd rather know than guess."

A non-committal grunt, and some splashing and slopping noises. When he turned, he saw Sixshot hauling himself upright. Water glistened over his limbs, falling like crystals. The other mech saw him, stopped. "Problem?"

"No," Jetfire said. He clamped his optics shut. He had not been staring. He had not.

…except he had been. The salinated water ran in intoxicatingly complex rivulets over the white and purple and green armor, drawing lines like feather caresses over the broad metal. "I-I was just uncertain what that sound was."

Another grunt, and Sixshot began moving again, raising one leg over the edge, placing it on the ground, then the other. Fighting against his weakness, trying to push past it, through it. Trying to regain control, at least of himself.

Jetfire wished he had that much self-control. He could barely stop the treacherous thoughts from forming, from hijacking his rebellious optics, his errant thoughts. Jetfire tore his optics away, self-conscious, concentrating on gathering his tools. When he finally allowed himself to turn back around, Sixshot had propped himself against the workbench, watching him. Closed off, inscrutable, saline pooling around his footplates. The open laxness of his unconscious body had been replaced by a subtle tension—servos primed to fire. What was it like to be always on edge?

He came closer. "The sample first, perhaps?"

Sixshot nodded, holding out one of his arms. "Autorepair's better in this one," he said—an explanation that asked more questions than it settled. Jetfire nodded, and took the syringe, loading it with a sample capsule as Sixshot sent the code that sprang his armor locks, revealing the bare cables of his systems underneath. Jetfire found the blue-mesh of the energon line, placing the plasmaneedle's edge against it. He waited for a flinch, for any sign of pain from the mech as the plasmaneedle bit into the mesh, punctured the hose, and began drawing the pink-purple fluid out. Sixshot's arm was rigidly still, his optics studying…Jetfire. Jetfire ducked his head back to studying the exposed systems. Even with the prolonged saline soak, the lines were gummed and smeared, nicked and dented.

"You could use a refit." The words escaped before he could even think them through.

A strange grating sound. It took Jetfire a full klik to realize that that was Sixshot's laugh. "Never time for it," he said.

The capsule pinged its fullness. Jetfire drew out the needle, the prepared daub of hose sealant on his other finger stroking gently over the cut. "You have time now."

A long moment, and Jetfire could feel the building tension in Sixshot's servos, actuators building charge. He could feel the rising tension, but, even so, he was taken off-guard when Sixshot moved, one white hand slamming under his chin, digits closing around his throat.

The red optics were a handspan—or less—away from his own, wide and blaring. "What's your game, Jetfire?" the voice rasped near his.

"No game," Jetfire said. He felt, strangely, no fear. Only a rush of startlement. His processor traced the vulnerable lines and pressure points—unerringly found by the white fingers. Any control he had, over the situation, over himself, evaporated. Even so, he felt a strange, quiet faith that Sixshot wouldn't kill him, if for no other reason than if that were his intent, Jetfire would already be dead.

"Aiding the enemy," Sixshot said, slapping Jetfire with the words, staring into Jetfire's wide blue optics. Yes, that's what he was doing. Exactly. "Or," Sixshot continued, "You're planning on killing me." He watched Jetfire's face, keenly. The fingers released from around his throat, abruptly. Jetfire's cables still throbbed from the compression. "Not planning on killing me. Would have done it before." He twitched his head to one side, as if shooing off the unpleasant memory of having been so vulnerable.

Jetfire's hand curled over the plasmaneedle. A weapon, if only he'd thought to use it. "A mech is a mech," he said, simply.

"Autobot ideals." Sixshot scoffed. "Seems you're the only one who actually tries to live by them."

It was tempting to agree. Tempting to hold himself above his fellow mechs. But Jetfire couldn't do it. "Not true." He left it at that. He wondered how Sixshot's processor worked. The whole system seemed entirely foreign to him. A mystery. "But it is an offer."

Part of him trembled with excitement at the words, imagining stripping down the armor, scrubbing down the gummy mesh, revealing stark clean hoses and metal. Knowing Sixshot's systems, slowly, carefully, methodically. It was science and mystery and desire combined. So different from Starscream's fire; so different from Optimus's calming presence. Sixshot was wild, dangerous, and yet…somehow open. Somehow wanting something outside himself, but helpless to name it, much less seize it.

And he could feel that yearning charging the air between them, as Sixshot's hand came up to rub where Jetfire had smeared the liquid hose patch. "First fix the cybertoxin," Sixshot said.

Which was, Jetfire realized, a stumbling, halting 'yes.'


	3. Transgression

A/N Yeah, if it's any consolation, I'm entirely aware of how self-indulgent this pairing is. I love some of the standard pairings, but I guess part of my heart is to give the smaller-screen-time characters some love (literally). Also, by now you've probably realized I have a thing for 'hopelessly messed up people finding some sort of love'.

PNP, angst

Jetfire laid out the brushes, scrapers, wrenches, solvents, and all the cleansing tools he could need, along with patch lengths of standard types of cables and mesh. He could feel Sixshot's optics on him. And he was beginning to find the weight of that gaze to be comforting. He was wondering how he'd ever felt it to be threatening, that cool red gaze.

"I think this is everything I'll need." He'd wanted to lay it all out before Sixshot, so the other mech could see, no trickery. No deceit. If Jetfire were even capable of deceit.

"Countertoxin."

It was strange how Jetfire was even becoming used to Sixshot's truncated way of asking questions. "Are you having any side effects?" He turned his blue optics to face Sixshot.

Silence. Which was a 'no'.

"I will only clean a small part right now. You will be fully online and operational. The countertoxin will continue to work and I can monitor you more closely." He felt, acutely, his clumsiness. He was not Ratchet; he lacked a medic's ability to explain the situation. And he could still feel himself using words to try to fill up Sixshot's silence.

Sixshot grunted, approaching. "What."

Jetfire felt a smile curl across his face. It felt…alien. How long had it been since he'd smiled? That long that it felt unfamiliar? Disconcerted, he said, "Something small. You said one arm did not have good autorepair?"

Sixshot moved to the other side of the workbench, laying his arm across it. He met Jetfire's gaze steadily, popping his armor locks.

Jetfire observed, reaching to pick up a brush. "I have your permission to touch you?" He wanted to be certain. And…he wanted to make Sixshot say 'yes'. The fancy had seized him, a wild delight, a challenge. Starscream, he thought, would approve of such a whim.

"Be dead if I didn't."

Jetfire made a snort, a feeble tendril of a laugh. An actual laugh. It felt…better than he remembered. "Can you say 'yes'?"

A hesitation. "If I wanted."

The snort grew a little more certain, finding its legs. He couldn't tell if Sixshot had said it to be witty. He didn't credit the Phase Sixer with much of a sense of humor. But he felt a slight lessening of the tension in the servos laid out beneath him on the work surface. He wasn't offended, at least.

Then again, he thought more soberly, he couldn't imagine a mech who had lived a life as Sixshot had would have much to find funny. He could feel the smile fade from his mouth.

He bent over the exposed arm, concentrating on the gunked up cables in front of him, trying not to think of what they had done, how many they had worked to kill. He worked in silence for a time, scrubbing the grease and the cables, crusted energon—most likely not all Sixshot's—spilled from ancient battles, swabbing a fine solvent on the corroded contact plates, keeping his optics and cortex firmly on the work at hand.

It was strangely sensuous, he thought, but perhaps only because he wasn't a proper medic. Someone with actual medic training would probably have gotten accustomed to viewing his patients as simple parts, and not…what Jetfire was thinking.

And it was gratifying work, though tedious, to watch the dirt of…ages finally scrub away, hoses and cables and connectors gleaming. He took a moment to study: Sixshot had said the self-repair was hampered on this arm. The nanite reservoir looked intact, but…perhaps it had been damaged somehow?

He switched tools to a small cutter without bothering to ask permission, and sliced into the reservoir to get a sample. The stuff was dead and sluggish, heavy like mud instead of liquid. "You were exposed to gamma radiation?" he said, looking up.

Sixshot shrugged. "Among other things."

Jetfire held up his clot-covered probe. "The nanites are useless. Batching new ones will take a decacycle." An implied question. He rotated the chamber to drain—either way, it was doing Sixshot no good.

Sixshot considered. "No way faster." Jetfire knew what he was thinking—that batching would require programming them with his entire system scan. A little too personal.

"I…I could give you some of my own to transition but…it would be painful."

A shrug. "Faster, though."

Jetfire hesitated. Then, "All right." He suppressed a strange, quiet, entirely unscientific thrill that part of his systems would become Sixshot's. He hid the embarrassing thought in motion, as he bustled to get the transfusion equipment, only sitting back down across from the six-changer when he felt somewhat in control. He was pleased that his hands didn't shake as he opened his own armor lock and probed the catheter into his own reservoir.

Jetfire studied Sixshot's face keenly as the nanites began to transfuse. There was a slight tightening around the optic lenses, but nothing more. "It hurts?" It had to, Jetfire knew. It had to be blazing white hot fire through Sixshot's arm as the nanites tried to repair Sixshot's systems into Jetfire's own, only to be stopped, logjammed by error/restart messages until they took the new coding.

"Nothing I can't handle," Sixshot said, and then stopped, abruptly, as if surprised at the amount of words he'd said.

"That wasn't what I'd asked," Jetfire pushed.

Sixshot's optics flicked. "It wasn't," he agreed. And then…nothing. Infuriating, characteristic stonewall.

Jetfire pushed further. "You feel pain…you feel pleasure?" Regret flared instantly at the piercing gaze. He twisted his head away, embarrassed.

"No." Sixshot's voice was flat. The hand on the exposed arm twitched, clenching on air.

Jetire blinked, still embarrassed, but his curiosity piqued. "No?"

Another of those enigmatic shrugs.

Jetfire set his cutter on its weakest setting, and slid it down a line. "That?" It should feel like a gentle feathering caress.

The optics flickered, nothing more.

Jetfire put the tool down. "I can run an advanced diagnostic." There was simply no other reason why Sixshot couldn't feel pleasure. It seemed somehow…wrong. Awful. The worst thing a Decepticon could do—make one of their own anhedonic. Some sort of programming block or coding error.

Sixshot snatched his hand away, armorlocks snapping closed, as he swung his other arm over the table, throwing Jetfire face down upon the work surface. Tools scattered, rolling and clattering while Jetfire tried to calm down from the sudden blast of panic. He turned his cheek to the table, optics searching up Sixshot's chassis, while the Phase Sixer's hands pinned him, hard. He felt a weight over his shoulders, a shadow falling over his vision.

"It was an offer," he managed.

The grips tightened on him, the weight on his wings almost trembling. "You won't get at me that easily, Autobot," Sixshot snarled.

"I didn't mean—I wouldn't. Just to fix you. Just to help." Jetfire craned his neck, trying to see Sixshot's face. "Please."

"Don't need 'help'."

"I know. I'm sorry."Jetfire went slack, loose. He couldn't fight Sixshot. The only thing he could do is what he'd always done: not fight.

"Sorry because I'm going to kill you."

Jetfire's audio scraped on the worktable. "No. Sorry that I upset you." His voice was raw with every emotion except fear.

He heard a rumbling growl, and then, abruptly, the weight on his back was gone. He lay still for a moment, letting the heat from Sixshot's contact seep off into the air. He moved, slowly, as unthreatening as possible, pushing carefully off the bench. Sixshot glared at him from across the table. Studying him; unable to figure him out. The only reason, Jetfire realized, he was still alive.

Jetfire stooped to pick up the tools, his wings flicking, feeling Sixshot's optics gaze heavy on him. He came around the bench to pick up the cutter, stooping low.

He straightened, the tension rising, his wings pinning rigid against his back. "I did not mean to transgress. Honestly."

"Transgress."

Jetfire fiddled with the cutter in his fingers. "I…got too close." Foolishness. He was not much of an Autobot but he could hardly seek solace from the enemy. Loneliness was eroding him.

"Close," Sixshot echoed. His hand lashed out, snatching the tool from Jetfire's fingers. He pulled the mech closer by one white wrist. Jetfire's canopy clinked against the chassis. He had never realized how close in height they were. It was the closest anyone had come, the optics nearly level with his own. He felt his ventilation system hitch.

He flinched, feeling a hard hand on his wing. The grip softened, slid down the aileron, awkwardly, curiously, Sixshot's optics boring into Jetfire's.

"What do you want?" Jetfire asked, cautious. The hand, he knew, could grip with force enough to crush his wing.

"No more talking," Sixshot said, his other hand slicking over Jetfire's rib frame. An answer to his question? An order? Did it matter?

Jetfire felt a tremble but he couldn't decide if it was from his own frame or Sixshot's. He raised a hand, slowly, still a bit wary lest his gesture be read as a threat, and brushed Sixshot's shoulder.

The hand tightened on his waist, and Jetfire could feel the tension in the Phase Sixer's frame, as he fought with…some darkness. Something that read every gesture as an attack, that read every contact as an attempt to injure. Sixshot was, in his way, as frozen to pleasure as Jetfire was, his own systems throwing up blocks between himself and anything like comfort. But Jetfire could also feel the supreme effort to fight against it.

Jetfire realized that…he would have to take lead. He was not used to being the more experienced—it did not come easily to him. He ran a shy thumb over Sixshot's facemask, encouraged as the other mech turned, ever-so-slightly into the gesture. He felt a question bubble up in his vocalizer, but remembered Sixshot's last words. Right. No more talking. They were neither of them adroit with words, and they were useless now, anyway.

And he would have to trust Sixshot to read his intentions for what they were, which was, he thought, probably as much of a stress to trust as Sixshot's own battle.

Wordlessly, then, he opened his interface hatch, his optics dropping, shyly, and then back up, hopefully. Sixshot blinked, then tapped a panel on his side. The armor was battered, dented, and Jetfire had to pry it open, a bit surprised by the Phase Sixer's passivity.

He asked permission, with his gaze, one finger gently circling the access port's rim. Sixshot stretched a hand toward Jetfire's equipment, his own thumb clumsily mimicking Jetfire's gesture. Jetfire sagged against him, quivering, leaning to rest his helm against Sixshot's, their faces close. I don't want this to hurt, he thought, wished, as hard as he was able. What he was afraid, even to think to himself, was that he didn't want this to be a disappointment. He could feel his own longing swelling up in him, echoes of long untouched desires resonating back to life. His electromagnetic field rippled, mapping the contours of Sixshot's larger frame.

Even so long unpracticed, Jetfire's hand remembered the gesture, uncoupled his interface module, finding the access port. With one sigh of razor-sharp anticipation, he drove his module into the port coupling, feeling it seat, feeling his datastream pulse with the force of long restrained desire. He fumbled with Sixshot's module, the cables tangling between his fingers, body twitching with each pulse of his datastream, until he finally, shakily, managed to seat the module.

Sixshot's optics flickered, a quivering shudder traveling up his frame. The lethal white hands clutched at Jetfire, fingerpads sending little stars of almost-pain across his sensornet. The datastreams collided in a explosion of light and color and sensation, fighting for rhythm. Jetfire's knee servos gave—he clung at the green chassis. Sixshot's arms tightened, lowering them both to a tangled mass on the floor. Control was beyond both of them at this point, both helpless before their too-long-restrained desires.

Sixshot's datastream was some wild, untamed thing, beyond even his ability to control, that battered at, tore at Jetfire's sensornet, raw and yet impossibly aroused. This was not the acid sharp desire of Starscream, but something heavy and brutal, unsubtle, blunt, an impossible to stand against. Jetfire's datastream whirled around it, trying to catch or counterpoint the tempo, building toward release.

Sixshot's hands roamed ferociously over Jetfire's wings, his chassis sliding slickly over Jetfire's cockpit. Jetfire's own hands explored, with more urgency than he thought he could have, squirming, writhing over the Decepticon.

A sound started from somewhere deep in Sixshot's frame, like a buzz, a vibration almost too low to hear at first, vibrating through their frames, rising, growing louder, larger in amplitude until it raised to a deafening roar. Sixshot bucked upward, his datastream snapping into synch with Jetfire's, the overload slamming across both of their systems, throwing charge across their nets that swept Jetfire away, away from himself, his body, his ever, ever thinking cortex, until he was nothing but sensation wrapped in fragile tendrils of emotion.

And the only conscious thought he could make was that he never wanted this to end, never wanted to return to that body, that snarled mass of problems and paradoxes and worries and anxieties. He wanted to stay here…where he was free.


	4. First

Jetfire had been stunned, then honored, then worried, when he'd put the pieces together: he had been Sixshot's first. As heady and flattering as the thought was, that he had been the one chosen, that he had been, in a sense 'worth it', it was more than a little distressing to think of a mech gone so long without even the simplest and most obvious of pleasures, one that even he had enjoyed. If…rarely.

Sixshot hadn't told him—not that he was much for speaking anyway. But Jetfire had figured it from the ardent way the mech approached him later that night. Sixshot had come to his berth, stalking in uncanny silence, optics tilted, studying Jetfire until the Autobot had asked, quietly, "Is there something you need?"

That strange bitter snort that was Sixshot's laugh, and the white hands had descended on Jetfire, pushing him back against the berth, pinning him with casual ease. "Could say that," Sixshot murmured. He squeezed Jetfire's wrists under one hand, over Jetfire's head, while his other began roaming over the white frame, the pressure changing from needy almost painful intensity, to almost imperceptible brushes.

Jetfire found himself trembling, the caresses pulling current from his circuits, a trail of glittering dust across his sensornet. He felt no fear, not this time, that Sixshot would kill him, despite the helpless vulnerability of his position. Sixshot's optics alternated from Jetfire's face to tracking his hand's progress over the white armor, the blue glass of his canopy, tracing the seams of the larger panels. His EM field rippled against Sixshot, his ventilation cycle staggering, unsteady. The impassive face studied Jetfire's squirming response, feeling the change in his EM field. "Possible."

Another of his flat questions, as if it somehow was weakness to admit to curiosity. Jetfire twisted his wrists, gently, wanting to touch as well. It seemed selfish to lie still and receive. But perhaps Sixshot thought that was too much like a threat, too much like ceding control. Was it possible?

"To overload from touch? Yes." Jetfire's sensornet was glowingly alive, cascades of sensation whirling across it. A different kind of overload, more…selfish, only one mech enjoying. The kind of overload Jetfire had found, too often, himself doing, quietly, furtively, alone; when his desires would no longer be ignored.

Sixshot nodded. "Hnh." He pushed one knee between Jetfire's thighs, glossing the thumb up Jetfire's thigh armor to brush more gently than Jetfire would have credited, the little glimpse of Jetfire's exposed cabling. Jetfire whimpered, pulling at the restraining hand.

The hand shifted to the span of his wings, stroking across the span, tracing along the aileron lines, gently tweaking the flaps themselves. Jetfire twisted, not knowing if he wanted to lean into the touch or away from it. No, it was not that difficult a question—he wanted to lean into it, more and more, but he felt suddenly shy. He was not, never had been, wanton or open in his desires. "You're very…good at that," he said, lamely, wanting to do something, however feeble, to return the sentiment.

Sixshot shrugged off the compliment. "Jet mode also." Oh. Right. Should have remembered that. And the image it brought to mind, that perhaps Sixshot had also resorted to the same measures but…he would have known, then, wouldn't he? That it was possible?

The thought staggered him, how lonely, how…out of touch (literally) Sixshot's life seemed.

The bulk of Sixshot's green chassis floated above Jetfire's face, as one hand kept his pinned, the other exploring, ruthlessly delicate, palm glossing flat over the armor, fingertips curling into seams and panel edges. Sixshot's expression went distant, as though mapping Jetfire's body.

Jetfire found himself twisting, his feet scrabbling helplessly, tractionlessly, on the berth. His net tingled, sensation eddying and swirling like falling gemstones, charge building across his systems. "Please," he heard himself gasp. He didn't know what he was asking for, just…please.

Sixshot released his hands as his only answer. "No touching," he muttered, just as Jetfire reached his hands to touch the stabilizers behind his shoulders. Jetfire floated his hands reluctantly to the berth, gasping as Sixshot slid both hands over his chassis, down both sides of his rib struts, and up, and then over to his arms.

"I want…," Jetfire murmured, before Sixshot cut him off with a look.

"Later." A promise, as well as a denial. Later…when? Jetfire's hands wanted to clutch at Sixshot, despite his command. They did not have forever. He did not know how long they did have, and—he forced the thought from his mind, chased out by another tsunami of sensation as Sixshot leaned further, curling his arms around the break in the wings and rolling down, pulling Jetfire on top of him, his hands now free to caress the entirety of Jetfire's backspan. Jetfire arched up, throwing his head back, his chassis pressing into Sixshot's, hands obediently dropping to the berth, curling against the metal.

And Sixshot's optics were fixed upon him, studying him, his responses, his reactions, and Jetfire found that gaze as arousing as the fingers that ghosted over his frame, the vibration against his body. He had never been looked at with such naked, raw lust before. He had never had his desires studied, summoned forth. He had never been, in a sense, desired. Not like this. And it was humbling and intoxicating at the same time, the two emotions conflicting, fighting like dragons of flame around his cortex, spinning him upward and out of control, his electrical systems sparking, thin threads of current shooting to Sixshot's fingers when he broke contact, spattering around the touches, as his systems pushed him, forced him inexorably into overload. His disobedient hands clutched at Sixshot's shoulders, white gripping green, as if anchoring himself, as if making Sixshot somehow…real.

He sagged back, limp, falling against Sixshot's armor, excess overload charge sparkling blue over his body. Sixshot stroked it, gently, over his wingspan, with his hands. A murderer's hands, a lover's hands; hands capable of singleminded violence, but also, Jetfire knew, knew intimately, capable of a needy sort of tenderness.

Reluctantly, Jetfire put his palms on the berth, trying to push off. The red optics narrowed, the hands slowing their touches. "Probably crushing you," Jetfire said, lamely.

"No." As if to prove it, Sixshot lifted his chassis off the berth, Jetfire's weight on him.

"Oh," Jetfire said, torn between moving and subsiding back onto the broad green panels, that for once, weren't too fragile for him, weren't too light. "Forgive me: this is all…a bit new to me."

And Sixshot laughed his rusty laugh, and said, merely, "New."


	5. Rescue

A/N SO! How's about some plot, eh? This was supposed to be the last chapter but...thinking of what would happen next kind of...ate my brain. Brace yourself because in a few chapters...Terrorcons! :D

[***]

They fell into a routine that Jetfire would have described as heaven had he put any stock in such a concept. While Jetfire worked on his research projects, Sixshot spent cycles per day repairing the damage he had done to the base, from the nearest blast doors outward, as though trying to wrap this idyll they both knew could not last in safety and illusion for as long as possible. It would end—they both knew it had to end—but both seemed to push the idea, and the reality, further ahead, willfully.

And the other cycles they spent per day were, even then, precious, rare gems. Jetfire told his history, again, to the reticent Decepticon, laughing bitterly at his own weaknesses, as if to disarm laughs from Sixshot—mocking laughs that never came. And Jetfire's laughter became less bitter, more genuine, and Jetfire felt unjudged and somehow…freer and happier than he had ever felt. And Sixshot, for his part, said quiet, enigmatic things, little blurts of stories that hinted at something much worse than Jetfire could imagine anyone enduring.

A handful of times, he'd mentioned his visions, the flashes of brutality, the urge of violence made manifest on his cortex, folding the future into the present, taunting Sixshot with madness.

Once, he'd mentioned that he'd thought he was going mad, that the visions were devouring him and would one day take over his autonomy altogether. Jetfire had ached with his own helplessness, finding himself wordless before the vulnerability of trust as much as the secret itself.

And those other cycles, more than any other kind, were spent in silence, without words, their bodies doing all the communicating that needed to be done, tangled tenderly in each others' arms, both shy and awkward, exploring or just seeking some mute comfort in the hum of another system, the touch of another frame. And sometimes it was ungentle, Sixshot's desires insistent, pulling Jetfire from his research, driving him against a wall, his hands insistent, optics demanding, his touches verging on the edge of pain, driving Jetfire from his sheltered safety into heights of ecstasy he had never known. It grounded Jetfire, he knew, as nothing else had done. And he felt the other mech draw some comfort, some solace, from his own solitude, by the contact.

Until.

Until it all shattered, like splintered glass.

The self-appointed rescue team.

They battered their way in the middle of recharge cycle, the near blast doors buckling from sudden force.

Sixshot bolted upright from where he had draped on the berth, Jetfire pulled against him. He swore, shoving Jetfire behind him, hand slamming on the table where Jetfire's gun, now long since discarded, had languished. Only Sixshot would note where it was, remember it in the sudden rush of an assault.

"Jetfire!" The voice was muffled from the layers of steel and plascrete. "Respond!"

"I'm fine," Jetfire said, staggered, slow, by the sudden slam of reality back upon him. The Autobots here. And there would be no easy answer this time. Sixshot would be killed, or he would kill Jetfire's supposed rescuers.

"Let us in! We need to clear the base."

His optics flew to Sixshot, who had taken a position where he could get a clean high shot on anyone coming through the door, the gun's barrel balanced on one forearm with an absolute, perfect steadiness.

"I, uh. I'm fine. It's clear." Trying, he knew, to merely delay the inevitable. He thought, wildly, of asking Sixshot not to shoot. To surrender. To give in peacefully.

But then he realized that that would be asking Sixshot to be other than he was. Other than who Jetfire wanted him to be. And he was terrified that if he said the words…Sixshot might obey. Jetfire did not deserve this kind of power. He was unworthy. He did not have the right to ask, even so.

"Open up." Jetfire could hear the mistrust in the voice. They were worried, thinking he was held at gunpoint, perhaps, and forced to speak. If only they knew that they were the ones at gunpoint.

I can't, he thought, weakly, something like a sob building in his chest. I can't. And that's the problem. Because the one time I did open up….

And he hated himself that he hadn't thought of this sooner, hadn't come up with a strategy, a solution. A terrible soldier, without even the rudiments of strategy, but a terrible scientist as well, the most important variable escaping him.

"Sixshot," he breathed rising to his knees on the abandoned berth. "I'm sorry."

The Phase Sixer's head twitched at the words. Jetfire jumped to his feet but it was too late—Sixshot stormed the door, slapping the side panel open. He'd taken Jetfire's apology as an admission of complicity, that the whole thing had been a delay, a set up, keeping Sixshot tamed and captive until an attack could be mounted. Jetfire hadn't thought—though he should have—that the attack would have sent a beacon of distress through the communication channels.

So…wrong. So awfully dreadfully wrong. Jetfire knew why they spent so much time without speaking. Silence told fewer lies.

"Thank Primus you're all ri—" The rest of the word was blasted from his head as Sixshot opened fire, the helm evaporating into an energon-pink mist. The acrid pall of spark-burnt energon and coolant filled the room.

The other rescuers fell back behind the door as it closed, the fallen mech's corpse collapsing outside, flames licking fitfully at the power severed power cables. Jetfire raced to the door, but found himself hauled back, out of the way, by Sixshot. "They'll kill you," Sixshot hissed. At that moment…Jetfire found it hard to care.

The rustling outside subsided into a taut silence as they waited, setting some trap. Jetfire felt Sixshot's arm slide over his shoulder, and he relaxed into the gesture, the familiar contact. Nothing would happen if they were together, he thought, even as another part rejected that notion as terrible, naïve foolishness.

Foolishness compounded: Sixshot's arm curled forward the forearm snaking around his throat, until Jetfire found himself a hostage. Sixshot kicked the door open again. "HOSTAGE," he bellowed just before the doors opened.

They held their fire. Like good Autobots, Jetfire thought, they held their fire, not willing to damage, even a poor excuse for an Autobot like Jetfire.

Sixshot pushed him ahead, the white arm firm around his throat, leading him through the squad of rescuers, who froze, barely daring to move. The threat was unmistakeable, Sixshot's gun swinging in a calm, steady arc over them in case any of them dared to move.

Sixshot pushed him through the small base, back through the damage he had wrought on his way in, half-finished repairs, as if undoing, unknitting their bond. Jetfire whimpered when Sixshot's chassis wing bumped his, or at the too-intimate slide of the thighs against the backs of his.

Sixshot must know, Jetfire thought, that rescue teams all left the ship, that their shuttle would be unarmed, empty. He led Jetfire right to the verge. Jetfire struggled for something to say, but nothing he could think could make it any better. No words could undo the damage. And all this time he had been afraid of physical clumsiness, of hurting the Phase Sixer's body. He had not thought he could do so much injury to something less visible.

Sixshot swung around, his heel plates ringing against the shuttle's deck, Jetfire still outside. The arm over his throat loosened. He stepped away, turning importunate eyes to Sixshot.

Only to be met by the sole, harsh black eye of the gun.

Jetfire shuttered his optics briefly. Yes. He was ready. He deserved this. His optics opened, clear, deep pools of everything he wanted to say, but couldn't.

The gun barrel stared him down. He remembered the head exploding, the spray of silver splinters of metal flying, the cortex shattering, the soundless whine of death, the buzz-burst of the gun's discharge. He could handle it. The mech had died before the pain could hit. He would get the same. He deserved no better. Probably worse.

Sixshot growled, the optics hot and coruscating with some unreadable emotion, over the gun, and suddenly the barrel was gone, and Skyfire was left blinking as the Phase Sixer stormed inside the shuttle, slapping the doorlocks.

Jetfire stood numb, still only half sure he wasn't already dead, as the shuttle's engines blasted to life, tearing the small craft free of the planet. He heard the Autobots, his rescuers, assemble around him, some cursing, some blaming him, some pitying him what they thought was his ordeal. He deserved it all. He wasn't up for it, not when his spark gaped with pain at the worst thought of all—that Sixshot thought he had betrayed him.

Take me with you, he mouthed at the departing engine. The words he'd wanted finally coming to him, but late, too late. Take me with you, away from this. Away from…me.

The rescue team broke around him like a wave, bustling with noise—after all of Sixshot's silence, and questions he didn't want to answer. And life lurched forward again, the beautiful, frozen span that had been happiness and, and…not-loneliness and acceptance and the closest he had ever dared to love…melted and smeared in the hot light of reality.


	6. Half Truths and Shadows

Jetfire tossed on the narrow berth of the medbay. It was too small for him in the best circumstances, but he would rather suffer here than move to the forward cabin, where they would ask the most uncomfortable questions, the most damaging words, and for the kindest of reasons.

Coward. He always had been. But in a way he was not committing the worst cowardice: he was not letting himself run away from himself any longer. He was going to lie here and let it seep into his systems what he had done.

What had he done?

He had repaired the enemy. That might be forgiven; preservation of life was, after all, an Autobot ideal. But…he had done more. And he hesitated even lying in the cool, dim silence of the abandoned medbay, naming what he had done. He forced himself, feeling his wings twitch: he had interfaced with Sixshot. He had initiated the contact, he had had the first lustful thoughts. He had let his physical desires overwhelm him, override his better sense. He had opened himself, made himself vulnerable. Trusted. Known.

He had allowed himself to become wanton, as though Sixshot's reserve had polarized him. He remembered one time, tilting his face into one of the other mech's caresses, lipping a finger gently, then shifting to draw it into his mouth, teasing it with his glossa, tasting Sixshot's armor, exploring the fine seams of his digits, optics hot and heavy-lidded as he turned a sultry gaze to the red optics, shy and wanting, surrendering to his own desires. The Phase Sixer's optics mirrored his hot intensity, burning with want and inexpressible need.

Jetfire wormed on the narrow berth, trying to coil into himself, both around the image, as if to protect it, and away from it, as if it were too painful. They would know. Eventually, the Autobots, his rescuers, would know. Already they had constructed the skeleton of the narrative of his time with Sixshot—that he'd been held against his will, forced to repair the mech. And when—not if, but when—they discovered that Jetfire had interfaced…they would write an addendum of sympathy: that he had been forced, against his will, taken, with violence.

They would never believe that he had given himself, willingly, enthralled; that he had longed for, devoured the intimacy. He had wanted; he had been wanted. It had been…something beyond faction. Beyond politics. Beyond ideals. Beyond everything he had thought mattered.

Or they would believe it, and any trust he had with them would evaporate.

He…did not deserve their trust.

"I'm fine," he'd responded, tiredly, when they'd asked if he'd wanted their team medic to check him over. Not entirely a lie. A prevarication, perhaps, a delay of the inevitable. A quibble, because in the way they intended the question, he was fine. His systems were functioning well and cleanly. It was just his thinking that was a muddled, discontented mass, and no medical checkup could clear that up. He was not fine. He was a wreck, and the worst of it all was the thought that Sixshot hated him, that the last time he'd been touched it had been in hostility, that he had not gotten one last, warm caress to sustain him.

Where was he? What was he thinking? The Phase Sixer's cortex was a fantastic well of mystery for Jetfire, and the little glimpses he'd had into that world had fascinated him. He'd even begun to fancy that he could penetrate the programming, and given time and trust and access to Sixshot's codes, maybe disarm the swelling madness that he had felt jerk the other mech awake in the middle of the recharge cycle.

He tried to find a position on the berth that was new, that didn't instantly call to mind Sixshot's touch—the broad, white, killer's hands roaming over his body, possessive and exploring both at once. It was almost impossible to find one that didn't summon a ghostly tingle of an imaginary hand over his body.

Jetfire heard a scrape of approaching feet. He thought fleetingly about feigning being in recharge, but no. He would not commit to a total lie. "Yes," he said, into the darkness.

First Aid had paused in the doorway. "We're sorry it took so long to get to you."

Cutting irony, all the sharper that First Aid was entirely sincere. "There's no need to apologize," Jetfire managed, hoping, praying that the questions he most dreaded answering wouldn't come up.

First Aid's fingers curled shyly around the doorframe. "Was he…too awful?"

Jetfire felt ill, torn between betrayal or a truth that would destroy him. "N-no."

"I can't imagine what it must have been like, knowing he could kill you. He's…unstable." The medic's optics were wide open pools of innocent worry.

"He needed something from me," Jetfire said, hating himself. Truth, but…misleading. He wished he had the courage to say the truth, the total truth: that there had been something raw and earnest and needy in Sixshot. That he had no fear that Sixshot would kill him. Even at the end, he had been, well, resigned to it, perhaps, as he stood, alone on the ground outside the shuttle. The other mech had yielded to him: he opened himself, in that moment, utterly to Sixshot's control, as he had done all along, since the first time, giving himself over to something larger than himself, and his paltry science.

"Well, if you need anything from us…," First Aid offered. "Just to talk or anything?"

"No," Jetfire said. "I'm fine. Truly." A lie, utterly and completely. He ground his optic shutters together.

First Aid started forward. "You're in pain?"

Yes. Pain worse than any injury. "No," Jetfire said, and thought, with a wild bitterness, that he was beginning to sound like Sixshot.


	7. Coping Mechanism

Ummm, yeah. Have some Terrorcons. And Sixshot's really, really poor social skills. In his own way, he's trying to cope.

[***]

Sixshot growled. Stupid. He glowered at the nav-system, as though it were at fault. Got soft. Got weak. Let yourself…change. Let him get to you.

Him.

Sixshot's systems flared just at the thought, just at the memory, just at the name: Jetfire. His module signaled its readiness for an interface that was now, forever, gone beyond reach. He'd never see Jetfire again. Too dangerous.

He filed a hard 'no kill' order. He owed the Autobot that much. For the repairs, he lied to himself. He tried not to think of anything else. Not soft sentimentality. No. He was not soft. He was not weak. Jetfire would most likely die, but a debt of some kind of honor made Sixshot determine that it would not be at his hands.

His hands worked the shuttle's controls competently, with a long-practiced familiarity. How many control systems had he mastered? How many vehicles had he driven or flown?

How many deaths had happened at these hands?

But they still felt new and clumsy and unpracticed, glossing over Jetfire's frame. The palms tingled with want, imagining the feel of the systems-warmed armor, the smooth planes and clean edges, the sleek finish. He curled them more tightly around the ship's controls, trying to block the sensory-memory.

Behind his mask he scowled at the nav comp, which sputtered, glitching, unwilling to plot a course outside of known Autobot space for anyone who did not have 'proper Autobot identification codes.'

If he'd brought Jetfire…?

No. Insanity. Worse than usual, Sixshot, he castigated himself. The whole thing seemed to shred like a dream, a delusion written on a scrim. Right. What? Take him with you? As some sort of…bizarre concubine? A prisoner? Sixshot didn't deal in prisoners. And others would want to see his prisoner: Banzaitron, at the very least.

No. Unworkable. Sixshot traveled alone. Did everything alone. That was…some fluke. Some fevered side-effect. Some attempt to pry under his plating, to get to him, perhaps some attempt to suborn him, or sabotage, take advantage of the weakness the Reapers had wrought.

No. Not Jetfire. Sixshot had spent his entire life spotting enemies for their strengths and weaknesses. And Jetfire…was not a betrayer. He did not have it in him. It wasn't that he thought the jet lacked the courage, or the intelligence, to design a trap. But now that the heat of combat had cooled, his suspicion seemed…ridiculous. Even so, though, he could not play out an alternate scenario, could not figure a different way it could have ended: neither he with Jetfire, nor Jetfire with him.

Which was, Sixshot thought, not the same as saying Jetfire was not a threat.

Best this way. Best a clean break, the way he'd left the Terrorcons after Mumu Obscura. Stop before…ideas could coalesce, futures begin to try to form. You don't have a future, Sixshot.

He snarled in frustration—from his thoughts, from his thwarted desires, and from the recalcitrant nav comp—slamming a hand on the console. The screens blanked, flickered, and came back on. And the nav lock was gone.

Sixshot snorted. Ironic: he'd solved most of his problems with physical force. He didn't think it would solve this one.

[***]

The Terrorcons' quarters were at the far end of the landbase. For what most of the Decepticons deemed 'obvious reasons'. Really, 'obvious _reason_': Blot. The other Terrorcons had gotten used to him—Hun-Grr had decided that his olfactory sensors had just short circuited on the 'Blot-reek' relays, and they'd gotten to actually kind of like their relative isolation.

So it was a bit of a surprise to hear heavy footfalls approaching down the long, untenanted corridor. Blot and Sinnertwin looked up from where they had been playing a game, Hun-Grr lifted his head away from the datapad's latest materiel requests, Rippersnapper sitting up from where he had flopped on the floor.

Cutthroat stuck his head out from his recharge room. "Awright, Blot. What'd you do?"

Blot's face went wide and blank. "Do? I didn't do anything! Well, I mean, not that I know of, beyond the things I did. That I know I did. But I didn't do anything I didn't…," the optics began to cross in confusion, "…know…I…did?"

"Stop talking," Hun-Grr snapped.

"I was just, you know, talking?"

"Your talking hurts my cortex," Rippersnapper muttered. "Stop with the words."

"Oh. Okay. I'll just be quiet. I mean, I was just kind of—"

"Shut it." Sinnertwin gave Blot that Look of his. The one with bonus optics.

Blot subsided, head shrinking back.

The footfalls grew nearer. Hun-Grr could feel the tension rising in him, in all of them. There was a reason their visitor was coming in person, and not comming. And it couldn't be good. Although, it had better be a good reason. Just not a…oh frag. Hun-Grr glowered at Blot. Bad enough the smell—why did Blot's Stupid have to be contagious, too?

The door whooshed open.

"Sixshot!" Hun-Grr jumped to his feet, datapad clattering to the ground. "I, uh, we…uh…how are you?" There, that sounded good, right?

Or maybe not. Sixshot stopped, his optics running a circuit of the room. He seemed to be weighing each of the Terrorcons in turn. His optics stopped on Hun-Grr. "You."

"Me?" Wait. Was that good? Was it bad? Was Sixshot mad at him? Did Sixshot even _get_ mad?

Sixshot moved, grabbing Hun-Grr by the wrist, and walking past him, dragging Hun-Grr along with him, back to the recharge rooms. He paused by Cutthroat's open door, jerking a thumb. "Out."

"Out?" Cutthroat blinked.

"Yeah," Hun-Grr said, guessing blindly. "Uhhh, Sixshot and I need to, ummm, talk. In private." He tried not to get his hopes up. You know. Berth. Privacy. Sixshot…!

Sixshot just stared at Cutthroat, until the Terrorcon quailed back, and then sidled from the doorframe. "Yeah. I'll, uhh, just…go root Sinnertwin on or something," Cutthroat mumbled.

"Yeah, you do tha-whoa!"

The door closed between Hun-Grr and the rest of the rec room. The other four Terrorcons blinked at each other.

"What the frag's that about?" Rippersnapper said, finally.

"You don't think?" Sinnertwin lay his game controller down, edging toward the wall separating them from Cutthroat's room.

"Do I want to think? Hun-Grr's always telling me it's bad when I think," Blot mused. The others glared at him, but he pushed on. "HEY! Maybe they're 'facing!"

"Thanks, Private First Class of the Obvious," Rippersnapper said.

"Instead of yammering, we could listen in and find out," Sinnertwin said. "Thin spot in the wall right here."

Cutthroat gave him a 'how, exactly, do you know that?' look. Sinnertwin shrugged, grinning maliciously, before tilting his head to the wall.

They gathered. Well, of course. It was their team leader. And Sixshot. Alone. In a room. With a berth. And, you know, maybe they'd need to bust in there and rescue him or something. Or…not.

The sounds were muffled—Hun-Grr's voice, punctuated by the deeper voice, shorter words, of SIxshot, and then a bunch of bumps and yelps and finally long droning sounds, rising and falling, faster, reaching a sort of wild crescendo with an "OH PRI-!" in what was unmistakably Hun-Grr's voice.

"I," Rippersnapper said, in the sudden silence, "Am so jealous."

[***]

The Terrorcons had settled themselves around Cutthroat's door, determined not to miss what to them was the big moment. Well, not counting the like…eighteen other big moments that had happened while they were eavesdropping. But the big moment when the door opened and they came back out. And they'd have no way of denying that the others KNEW. Oh yes.

Finally, they heard movement inside. Sinnertwin elbowed Rippersnapper awake. "Come on!" he hissed. "You do not want to miss this."

They tensed, grins spreading across their faces, anticipating Hun-Grr's mortification and, well, just wanting to look at the mech who could do that eighteen times in a night. Sixshot. Whoa. Eighteenshot.

The door opened, and Hun-Grr sagged against the frame, clutching his helm, knee servos a bit wobbly. Rippersnapper chortled. Oh this would be fodder for…ages to come.

"Hey," Blot blurted. "Where's Sixshot? Didn't he go in there with Hun-Grr last night?"

The others blinked. Where…was Sixshot?

Cutthroat dodged into the room, scanning. He turned back around, optics wide with surprise. "Sixshot is not here."

"Not here," Hun-Grr mumbled, vaguely. "Think he, uhhh, finally got enough?" He slid slowly down the doorframe, cheek rasping along the metal.

"Wh-where's Sixshot?" Blot asked.

Rippersnapper snorted. "He's Sixshot, for frag's sake." As if that explained everything. The others nodded, awed. In a way, it did.

"And he broke my sharkticon sculpture!" Cutthroat howled.

"Get you….'nother one," Hun-Grr said, puddling on the floor.

"That's not the point! He broke my stuff! And," and a devious glint crossed Cutthroat's optics, like a flash of lightning, "I know just how he can repay me."


	8. Kiss

Jetfire's not coping well, either. In his case, the Autobots are trying to be...too understanding.

Jetfire remembered the kiss. His first kiss, his last kiss.

He had teased Sixshot (he, yes, _he_, had teased another mech) nuzzling against Sixshot's throat, flicking his glossa against the boundary of the other mech's facemask, teasing him, begging him, coaxing him to release the mask. He had no idea what Sixshot looked like behind the mask, and after a while, he no longer cared—he just wanted to touch, to feel. He wanted to open his mouth, to yield to Sixshot this way, as well. But he couldn't bring himself to demand. He couldn't impose.

And then, what turned out to be the last night they would share, he had murmured, forehead against Sixshot's, some soft, longing words before drifting into recharge. And later, when he had succumbed to the drowsy comfort of the berth and the somnolent pull of his overloaded systems, he was aroused from that comfort by a hard warmth against his mouth, pushing in, awkwardly but fiercely. He heard, felt, a growl, the glossa pushing urgently, ungently, into his mouth, the lip plates grinding against his. It was just on the verge of pain, and maddeningly erotic, dark and driven by need and strangely, shyly brutal—everything he had come to associate with Sixshot. But the instant his hand moved to brush Sixshot's shoulder, to pull him in more closely, Sixshot stopped, withdrawing, leaving Jetfire's mouth still tingling, panting for breath.

Jetfire had lain for a moment, wings shivering with desire, swirling with questions. Had Sixshot heard his quiet request? Would he do it again if Jetfire lay still enough, pretending to be asleep?

And he recognized the gesture for what it was—a confidence, a sacred moment of connection, something that Sixshot had never shared or done with anyone, giving Jetfire another claim, another honor.

And then…his 'rescue' and he would never have another chance, never feel that tremulous aggression again.

[***]

"Jetfire," Ratchet's voice was uncharacteristically quiet, as if aware he was intruding on something. Jetfire had always been introverted, but in the days since his return, he had seemed to ball up in himself, giving monosyllabic answers. Before, he'd seemed shyly eager to talk, words spilling out at the least invitation. Now, he barely returned courtesies. Which meant…something awful had happened. And Ratchet could guess what that was.

"Yes," Jetfire said, blue optics brightening.

"I need to ask you something. It's for your own good." Ratchet could see Jetfire stiffen.

"Yes," Jetfire repeated, the word thin and tense.

Ratchet steeled himself. He knew the answer, but he knew as well that getting Jetfire to say the words was the first step toward healing. Jetfire would probably break down, cry, rage. Ratchet had seen it before, and hated that he'd have to see it again. Fraggin' vicious 'cons. And to Jetfire, of all mechs. Possibly the most innocent, most susceptible and least deserving. Not that anyone deserved…that. There always had been something vilely wrong about Sixshot.

"Jetfire. It's not uncommon. You're not the only mech it's happened to, and…we have ways to help you cope."

Jetfire's wings folded around him, as if hiding him from Ratchet's gaze. "It's not-," he cut himself off.

Ratchet gave a sad smile, placing a hand on the white knee. "It's all right, Jetfire. I've heard it before."

A minute shake of the head, Jetfire's mouth pinching inward, as if struggling to hide words.

"He…he forced you, didn't he?"

Jetfire met his optics for a moment, his face in anguish. "No." The word seemed to tear itself from his chassis.

It was Ratchet's turn to shake his head. "Your system readouts indicate significant upcharges. He forced you. Multiple times." The readouts had not lied. Sixshot—and maybe others, accomplices—had apparently used him, repeatedly.

Jetfire's hands curled into white fists. "No." He caught Ratchet's gaze with his own, and then choked out, "I wasn't forced."

Ratchet ex-vented. Denial. It must be humiliating, a large, powerful mech like Jetfire being made the sexual plaything of a psychopath like Sixshot.

"It did happen," Ratchet insisted, waving the readout. "You can't deny it."

Jetfire squeezed his optics shut as he spoke, as if the words would come more easily if he couldn't see Ratchet. "We interfaced. Yes. It wasn't…what you think."

Ratchet looked at the readout, then back at Jetfire. No. There was no way. Not Jetfire. Not the mech too shy to speak to Optimus—that was it. Optimus. Optimus, and Jetfire's attraction to him, would break through the shuttle's obstinacy. "All right," he said, backing off. "I didn't mean to upset you. We can talk about this later."

Jetfire sighed, looking miserable. Ratchet reached to stroke a comforting hand over the wing. Jetfire snatched it out of his way. "Jetfire," Ratchet said, "You're miserable now, but it'll get better."

The blue optics bored into his. "No," Jetfire said, with an uncharacteristic insistence, "It won't."

[***]

Optimus frowned behind his mask. "Ratchet, it is not my place...," he began, looking up from his report.

Ratchet's face was set. "Not normally. But it might do some good, in this case."

"I have no training in this." Optimus spread a blue hand on the desk, "I could do more harm."

Ratchet looked away, frustrated. "I'm not getting through to him." Meaning, Optimus knew, that Ratchet had tried everything he knew. Ratchet rarely showed it, but he hated his own lack of empathy, at times like this. The distance that kept him safe, kept him able to repair mechs he knew he'd have to send right back into harm's way, sometimes worked against him. And he was professional enough to recognize it, and to put the patient's care first. Like now.

"Where is he?"

"He asked to be allowed to continue with his research. I saw no harm. It might," Ratchet shrugged, "keep his cortex occupied." Of all the injuries Ratchet saw, it was those to the psyche that bothered him the most, because he could do the least to fix them.

Optimus nodded. "I shall try."


	9. Of Mice and Terrorcons

A/N Yeah, I'm fighting with these crazy Terrorcons who want to take over the plot. So, have some crack! :D

"SOOOOOO?" Oh it wasn't that they'd been staking out Hun-Grr's recharge quarters at all. Except, of course, they were. Hun-Grr had been pretty incoherent and a bit vague on the details about what had happened with Sixshot, but they were determined to get answers.

"What are you looking at?" Hun-Grr snapped, reflexively. Frag his team was ugly. Like…seriously ugly. Not that he thought that he was a handsome hunk of machinery—he had more important things to think about. Like, well, food. But still. These mechs were homely. No wonder Sixshot had chosen him.

Wait. That didn't sound right. Sixshot chose him because he was the best. And, maybe, the hottest.

Huh. That didn't work either. Okay. Sixshot had chosen him—who cares why? He had interfaced with Sixshot and they hadn't—and that was what mattered.

"You tell us," Cutthroat said. "What are we looking at?"

"I'm looking at your interface hatch!" Blot said, bouncing on his heels.

Right. We'd have to have that 'rhetorical question' conversation again, wouldn't we? But until then, Hun-Grr shifted his elbow to cover his hatch. "Well, stop."

Rippersnapper leaned against the wall. "Okay, Hun-Grr. We'll stop looking as soon as you start talking."

"Talking about what? There's nothing to talk about." Right? That sounded commander-y, didn't it? Was commander-y a real word? Who cares. "Now get out of my way. I'm hungry."

"I'll bet you are," Sinnertwin snickered, managing to slip ahead of Hun-Grr, blocking his way to the stores. "No food until you spill."

"Nothing to spill," Hun-Grr snapped.

"Could spill how you broke my sharkticon," Cutthroat said, joining the blockade. "You know, for starters."

Huh. Well, Hun-Grr didn't remember that happening. Oh, he remembered that it broke, but everything around it was sort of a hazy blur. A delicious, tingly, hazy blur. With a broken sharkticon.

"I think they were interfacing!"

Uhhh, thanks, Blot? "Yes," Hun-Grr said, stiffly. "And that sort of thing is normally, you know, private. Meaning you don't talk about it, and it's respected as something that is private."

"Well if that's how you wanted it," Sinnertwin said, "Maybe you should have been a little more, you know, quiet about it?"

"And not broken my sharkticon!" Cutthroat howled. "You don't know what I had to do to get that thing!"

Wow. Let it go, Cutthroat. Really. Just a fraggin' sculpture. "Maybe you shouldn't eavesdrop!"

"Aren't you the one saying we're a team? Well…teams share." Rippersnapper gave a smug chortle.

"Look," Hun-Grr said, trying to summon a glare. "We interfaced. End of story. Now I am SERIOUSLY hungry."

"Eighteen times take a lot out of you?" Sinnertwin giggled.

Hun-Grr froze. Well, Terrorcons had never been known for tact and/or manners. "Yes," he said. "A lot. And I am hungry. And when I'm hungry, I get cranky. And when I get cranky, someone," he glared at Sinnertwin, "Gets put on 'clean up after Blot' duty."

Sinnertwin blinked, raising his hands in surrender. "Hey, we're just curious, you know. Sixshot?"

A collective purr. One thing they did all agree on was: Sixshot = scrumptious. Even Hun-Grr agreed with that.

"Yeah, well."

Rippersnapper held out an energon treat. "So," he said, dangling it like bait, "that's what he took you back there for?"

Hun-Grr tried to glare at Rippersnapper, but his optics were glued to the treat. Frag he was hungry. "Yeah." His hand twitched to snatch at the dangling treat.

"So?"

"So?" Hun-Grr snatched the treat.

"What's he like?" "How'd he start?" "Is he any good?" "Did you see his face?" "Is he a good kisser?" "Does he cuddle?"

Hun-Grr blinked at the wall of questions, buying time by chomping on the treat. Which somehow only made him hungrier. "Dunno." He felt a little shy, but then he realized…they were actually a bit jealous. Ha. He straightened up. "We went in there and he asked—well, you know, however much he really asks anything—but he asked if I'd interfaced before and I said yeah and then he pretty much threw me on the berth and…umm…went at it."

Cutthroat purred, but Blot made a whine. "That's not very romantic."

"Romantic?" Sinnertwin looked at Blot as though he were even more disgusting than usual. "Sixshot. Romantic."

Hun-Grr nodded. It did sound absurd. And weird. And wrong. "Yeah, well, he had needs."

"Yeah, we heard," Rippersnapper said. "Apparently at least 18 needs."

"So he's pretty straightforward. Vanilla?" Cutthroat seemed a bit...schemey.

Hun-Grr shrugged. He hadn't really analyzed it. You know. A bit busy getting 'faced and all. "He, uh, doesn't need fancy tricks."

A pause, as the Terrorcons nodded. Yes, of course. That made sense. Sixshot didn't need fancy techniques. Frag, half of them were heating up just thinking about it.

"I want some," Sinnertwin muttered. "Not fraggin' fair."

"HEY!" Cutthroat said. "You think he'll come back?"

Hun-Grr growled. "Seriously. Will you forget about your fraggin' sharkticon? I'll get you a new one!"

Cutthroat cocked his head. "Was talking about getting some of that for myself. You know. Sixshot. Sex. Rowrf."

"Sexshot!" Blot chirped. Holy frag, sometimes Blot needed to be killed. And the only reason no one had done it was no one wanted to get near the Blot Stink.

"NONETHELESS," Rippersnapper said, trying to stab Blot with his optics. "It's a thought. You know. Lure him back here, and maybe it'll happen again."

"Unnnnh. Could use some recovery time," Hun-Grr said. Like, ow. Sexsho—dammit, Blot! SIXshot was fraggin' mindblowing in the berth, but, yeah. A bit rough. He pushed past the others, grabbing for stores.

"Hey, there are four of us," Sinnertwin said. "Not all about you." He and the others trailed in after Hun-Grr.

"And we can share. …kind of." Rippersnapper shrugged. "Or not."

"Not after BLOT," Cutthroat muttered.

"Right. So Blot goes last."

"And downwind."

"AHEM," Hun-Grr said. He paused to drain another pouch of energon. "You're already sharing him up like he's a fraggin' PIE and you're not even sure he'll come." Mmmm, pie.

Cutthroat shrugged. "He'll come. A lot, if I have anything to say about it. "

Sinnertwin chortled at the bawdy joke, until Hun-Grr glared him down. "What? He will show if we ask him. I mean, seriously. He came before." A pause, and then he broke down into laughter. "Eighteen times!"

Rippersnapper stared at Cutthroat and Sinnertwin who were laughing so hard they had fallen against each other, frames shaking. "They do, uh, have a point. He showed up at Mumu-Obscura. He likes us…uh, don't really know why. If we ask him, why wouldn't he?"

Hun-Grr considered. "Just me, but I'm not sure 'hey Sixshot, come on over so we can frag your cortex out' would really be the best approach. Lacks a certain tactical subtlety."

"Yeah, well, so do we," Sinnertwin managed, before dissolving back into laughter.

Rippersnapper rolled his optics. "Right. Well, we could ask him to come check out some new weapons or something. Right? Asking for his expertise. Or something."

Hun-Grr tilted his head. "That could work."

"Before we jump him," Cutthroat said, waving one hand. "Yeah, yeah, clever trap. But it's going to be tough moving from one to the other, you know. Oh look at our weapons…boink."

Sinnertwin quivered from the floor, "I'd like to get a real close look at his 'weapon'!"

"Maybe a test fire," Cutthroat tossed back at him, over his shoulder. Sinnertwin honked with laughter.

Seriously? This team was unmanageable. How Hun-Grr got them to do anything was a minor miracle. For which he obviously did not get enough credit. But Sixshot must have seen something. You know. To have chosen him. The Phase Sixer could have had anyone on the fraggin' base. But he chose Hun-Grr. He chose the Terrorcons.

"Right. Well. We're a team, Terrorcons." Hun-Grr crossed to the main display, flicking it on. He sketched out a rough of the furniture in the main room. "Let's make a plan."


	10. Best Plan Ever!

Alas, more Terrorcons. We'll return to your regularly scheduled angst, next time.

It had been, Hun-Grr thought, perhaps not the best idea the Terrorcons had ever had. You know. To invite Sixshot over and get him way, way overcharged. But it was definitely in their top five good ideas. Ever. Of all time.

And anyone who said the Terrorcons couldn't function as a team clearly hadn't seen the way they'd collaborated to get Sixshot where he was, right now, more or less passed out, in a sated pile of Terrorcon.

After four cubes in quick succession, Blot had worked up the nerve to ask to hold Sixshot's hand. Which was, Hun-Grr admitted, a bit weird, but it was a start. And a promising start, as Sixshot had considered Blot for a moment, and then shrugged, and held out his hand. Blot was still holding it, his hands finding the white palm unerringly, even in drunken, sated recharge.

Three or four cubes later, and he started answering questions. In like…complete sentences. Which was hardly up to Sinnertwin's level of constant babble, but was a lot. It had started fairly tame—about his ship, about his armor, then got a little bolder until Cutthroat had blurted out, "So, why did you save our afts back at Mumu?"

A screeching silence. Sixshot had frozen, as if his actuators locked down. The others glared at Cutthroat who gave an alarmed shrug. What? It was an honest question and if put to it they would all admit they wanted the answer.

"Mumu!" Blot blurted, eventually, singsong. "Mooo-moooooooooo."

It was stupid—well, it was Blot, after all—but it broke the uncomfortable tension. Sixshot reached for another cube. Probably, Hun-Grr thought, in hopes it would make Blot's singing less painful. Hun-Grr had tried the same tactic: it didn't work.

"HEY!" Rippersnapper cut in, abruptly. "You have a beast mode, don't you?"

Sixshot nodded. "Two, I guess. One's just a powered up form of the other, though." He lazed back against the couch, with another of those shrugs of his. As if it were no big deal. "Hard to stay in Wingwolf because the power tolerances are a bit fritzy."

"Wingwolf?" Rippersnapper looked delighted. And intrigued.

And Sinnertwin looked…devious. "Can we see? I mean, just for a bit?" Sinnertwin twitched.

Sixshot tilted his head. "Don't see why not." He pushed up, draining his cube. He lay it on the table, pulling his hand free from Blot's and transformed. He did it, Hun-Grr thought, deliberately. Nice, slow motion, plates sliding silkily over each other, mechanisms working smoothly. Showing off, maybe. Who knew that, a little drunk, Sixshot got a little vain? Well, Hun-Grr thought, he had every right to be. If he looked like Sixshot, he'd be vain all the fraggin' time.

The wolf-mode managed a shrug, head turning to meet Sinnertwin's gaze. "This."

Sinnertwin twitched again, giving a strange snickering sound, and then launched himself at the mech, flipping swiftly into his alt, landing between the stubby wings of the wolf-thing, sinking one head's teeth around Sixshot's neck.

And, well, that's when things had gotten really weird. You know, weird even for Terrorcons. But weird in a…kind of good way.

The two of them had roared, snarling, Sixshot rolling onto his back trying to crush Sinnertwin against the ground. More snarling, and flailing of limbs, the pair rolling over and over until they thunked against the wall, and then Sixshot had done a quick flip, landing with one paw smooshing one of Sinnertwin's faces onto the floor.

"Trying to start something." Sixshot had heaved, vents cycling loud under the strain of controlling the alt.

"Frag yeah," Sinnertwin retorted. "We all are. They're just too shy to do anything about it."

The wolf's red optics ranged over the others, who had frozen in various poses ranging from mortification to sheepishness. Another rolling scramble, the air filled with the sharp clicks of bites closing on empty air, the shrieks of claws on armor and then they stilled again, interface hatches open, cables somehow connected, Sixshot's flanks shuddering at the hard tempo of his own datastream slamming against Sinnertwin's tight, syncopated rhythm.

Sinnertwin gave a purring sort of snarl, clambering up the wolf, claws digging in, sinking his teeth again behind Sixshot's neck, his other head snapping and biting at Sixshot's wing. Sixshot reared up, paws clawing desperately, but unable to dislodge Sinnertwin, not even by slamming him against the wall, until they suddenly both jolted, snarling growls abruptly cut off, as their datastreams synched and burst into overload.

They collapsed to the floor, quivering, cables hopelessly tangled.

Hun-Grr made a strangled sound. Frag. That was…stupidly hot. Trust Sinnertwin to have the kinkiest idea. And the diodes to actually try it. Why Sixshot didn't just rip his head off...? Unless…he actually wanted it, too? Yeah, if Hun-Grr's memory held, Sixshot didn't have the smoothest moves. Kind of got right to it. Like he was trying to skip over the awkward part, get to the deed itself, exorcise some sort of demon.

Well, Hun-Grr hadn't minded, even though his access port was still a little sore. What Sixshot lacked in technique he sure made up for in raw enthusiasm and power.

Speaking of: Sixshot recovered, pushing to his four feet, shaking a limp Sinnertwin off his back like so much mud. His optics scanned the others. "Who's next."

Four hands went up.

"Ummmm," Cutthroat said, for once almost shy. "I have a gun kink?"

***

Yeah, Hun-Grr thought, a little blearily, rolling onto one elbow to watch the now-quiescent white and green frame, definitely a kink. A really kinky kink. But Sixshot had taken it, and then Blot, and then Rippersnapper, and then...yeah.

The red optics under the visor flicked on at Hun-Grr's movement, meeting his. The wild lust was gone, quenched, and Sixshot's optics were back to their usual flatness. "What."

Hun-Grr grinned, shaking his head. "You never stood a chance." Poor Sixshot. Well, not really.

Sixshot's optics floated over the other limp, hard-recharging frames before shrugging. Blot whimpered, wrapping another blotchy hand around Sixshot's wrist. "Neither did you."


	11. Two Sides

A/N I need to get a schedule about posting. I'm sorry. :C

And I did Banzaitron, for some reason.

Jetfire scrolled down his datapad, through the research they had salvaged from his asteroid station. It seemed like a different world, the data something like a vision from another dimension. Unlike his usual research, reading over this, he could vividly recall moments of his life, and how they had intersected with his research. He had just entered that sentence when Sixshot had pulled him away. This part, the boring data upload, he had been telling Sixshot about one day in the Science Academy before the war. The data seemed to sparkle with a life that was missing from the days he'd spent since his rescue.

It was like reliving, though, to revisit these memories. He half expected to look up from the table to see the Phase Sixer watching him, or searching through the locker for tools, or to feel the hot vents against his back just before the white arms would wrap around him.

His wings quivered, optics dimming into the daydream.

"Jetfire." Optimus's deep voice penetrated his reverie like a knifeblade. Jetfire jumped.

"Y-yes, Optimus." Jetfire shut down the datapad quickly, almost guiltily, but toyed with it in his hands like a talisman.

"May I speak with you?"

"Of course." Jetfire rose, clutching the datapad uselessly, wings going stiff behind him, wary. He knew what this was about, and it hurt. It hurt to think about at all, much less to be forced to talk about it with Optimus, of all mechs.

Optimus looked around the small lab. Jetire was crowded in here, a quickly-set up room, a temporary, stopgap research lab. "I am sorry about these accommodations."

"They're fine,' Jetfire murmured. He dropped his gaze to the floor, already bracing himself.

"You must miss your own research lab," Optimus said.

Jetfire wished, sincerely, that Optimus would stop. The conversation was agonizing, as Optimus was trying to reach out, not realizing that the last thing Jetfire wanted right now was to be reminded of…that place. And all that had happened. "A lab is a lab," he said, tightly. "It is the point of science that it can be replicated anywhere."

"Yes, but science does not happen without mechs to do it. And those are not replicable. Or replaceable."

Another painful attempt to throw a bridge across the gap between them. And Primus help Jetfire, he was trying to catch hold. "Yes, sir."

Optimus approached: Jetfire's white fingers curled around the datapad. There had been a time when he would have given anything to have Optimus look at him with that soft sympathy and warm regard. Now it just made him uncomfortable, conjuring other possibilities that seemed dead to him now. "Ratchet sent me," Optimus said.

"I know." And I know why. And…I don't want to have this conversation. Not yet. Not with you.

His transgression seemed enormous now, treason. Or worse, if there was anything worse.

"What do you feel comfortable telling me about it?"

Nothing. But Jetfire knew that would not do. "I interfaced with Sixshot." So much was in the medical reports. It said everything and nothing and it did him nothing to deny it, other than losing his credibility. He could feel Optimus's optics on him, studying him. Was he ashamed? Yes, of himself, of his own cowardice. About what he had done…? He didn't know. He forced his gaze to meet Optimus's.

He nodded, forcing his wings up. Yes.

Optimus was silent for a long moment. "Did he threaten you?"

A hesitation. He would not lie. Not to Optimus. "Yes, but…not about that." Sixshot hadn't needed to. Jetfire had wanted it to happen. His wings began vibrating with emotion.

Optimus stepped back. "I am sorry, Jetfire. I did not mean to stir up unpleasant memories."

They weren't unpleasant. And that was beginning to be the problem. It had felt so sure and certain and right when it had been happening, a warm thrill of desire, fascinatingly mobile. It had been everything he'd ever dreamed, wanting and being wanted, being trusted, being needed, being…accepted, without any questions of the past or of loyalty. Simply, purely, all that had mattered was the moment and the other mech in front of him.

"You did not," Jetfire answered, quietly. Not a lie.

"He did, I heard, threaten to kill you. At the end, as a hostage."

"He had no choice," Jetfire said.

"He could have killed you."

Yes. That had always been there. From the very first moment, the sure knowledge that Sixshot could, would kill him without a moment's thought. And somehow, it had attracted Jetfire. Perhaps the same way that Starscream had attracted him—like playing with fire, toying with a loaded gun. Since he'd joined the Autobots, he'd lost any chance of exercising that sense of adventure that he'd known before the war. Is this where it had gone? Is this it surfacing at last? Sublimated, repressed? And Jetfire had felt no real fear—not that he was certain that Sixshot wouldn't ever do it, but that…it just didn't scare him. He wasn't brave, wasn't much of a warrior, but he did not fear death. If he had, he'd never have been an explorer.

"He did not," Jetfire said. If only that kind of lack of fear could translate to this kind of courage. "Because the rescue team behaved admirably."

"Our mission is to preserve life. Even if it means Sixshot getting away."

"Yes. They did well. I appreciate it." The words felt hollow, though he meant them. It wasn't their fault.

"It must have been…disturbing to think that he would have killed you. The report said he threatened you at the ramp of the shuttle." Pushing on the same point, trying to direct him into the correct narrative.

Jetfire groaned. They had written an alternate interpretation of everything, hadn't they? He supposed it had looked like it from the outside, and easier to take than to think that he had wanted it, he had been willing to accept anything, even death, at Sixshot's hands.

Which sounded…insane now. Like the world of a dream, when you wake up, and the logic that had seemed so clean and clear and obvious, you realized upon waking violated every known law. "He did not kill me," Jetfire said, carefully, feeling as though the ground under his feet was heaving, unsteady.

"And that is what matters, Jetfire." Optimus nodded, almost relieved. "And we will do our best to help you recover. But you must help us help you."

Autobot ideals. Jetfire heard the words seem to stir from the back of his cortex—Sixshot's quiet rumble. Even in memory, it sent skirls of shivery sensation across his net. But…Autobot ideals. He wasn't the only one to live them, or believe in them. "Yes, Optimus. I just…need some time." If time could do anything to straighten the confusion that was beginning to burn in his mind.

"Of course," Optimus said. And then, himself unsteadily. "I regret we left you so long up there. Loneliness is a terrible thing."

"Yes." The word hung between them like a shard of ice, brittle and glittering. How could he explain? It was the trust. Sixshot had trusted him—not fast and cheap and thinly, the way the Autobots had—but making him work for it, making him earn it. Once earned, though, it had been implicit, a foundation more solid and stable than tungsten.

And Sixshot thought he had betrayed that. He would never trust him again.

"A terrible thing," Optimus echoed, and Jetfire discovered, in that instant, something even more terrible—pity from someone he admired.

[***]

Sixshot stood in front of Banzaitron, glaring the smaller mech down. "Yes. A mission."

"You're…asking for a mission." A hint of amusement in the smaller mech's voice.

Sixshot tilted his chin lower, sharpening his glare. Banzaitron shrugged. "Unfortunately, we don't have any systems currently on Phase Six Infiltration."

"Phase Fives, then." Sixshot had done Phase Fives before. There was precedent.

"I have…," Banzaitron consulted, "one. It's supposed to go to Overlord."

"Overlord." A joke, a sick one at that. Either that or Banzaitron was toying with him. Overlord was gone. As usual. Possibly dead. Not Sixshot's concern.

"Why do you want a mission?"

"My job."

Banzaitron chuckled. "So eager. Thought the fun had gone out of it for you."

It had. Long ago. Never injured to the point of incapacitation, never exhausted, something had to give, and what had given was Sixshot's formerly fierce pleasure in combat. Loneliness and invulnerability somehow combined to leach all pleasure from the precise exercise of brutality. Sixshot's vertical stabilizer twitched. Don't push your luck, Banzaitron, he thought. "Bored."

Banzaitron's optics glinted, needling Sixshot. "Yes. That's why we give out missions. To alleviate boredom."

A little too close to the truth. He could feel it slipping from him, but…not from lack of practice. From the specter of Jetfire, who seemed to haunt the margins of his consciousness. That surrendered look from those pale blue optics, willing to take anything from Sixshot's hands, even death.

Even abandonment?

Sixshot blinked, driving the image away. "Lose my edge."

"You?" Banzaitron laughed. A flash of movement, Banzaitron aiming a blow at Sixshot's head. Sixshot's arm flew up, catching the fist on his heavy forearm armor. "Not losing much of an edge," Banzaitron confirmed.

"Stupid to have me and not make use of me," Sixshot parried.

"Stupid to waste you on things so far beneath your abilities," Banzaitron countered.

SIxshot's foot scraped on the deck in frustration, optics hardening.

Banzaitron was studying him. "So."

"So."

A snort. "Tell me about the Reapers."

Sixshot, this time, was caught off guard. Of course. Words. Combat, he could handle. Words, he could not. Only Jetfire hadn't seemed to notice or mind. "Reapers." He shrugged. "Wanted me to go with them."

"You didn't."

"Obviously." Uncharacteristic sarcasm. Banzaitron was pushing too closely, deliberately.

"And they…let you go." Banzaitron's voice was dripping with amused doubt, as though he'd caught Sixshot in a lie.

"Ask the Terrorcons." Sixshot refused to let Banzaitron get under his plating. Bother them. Sixshot felt certain the gestalt would back him up, since it was, merely the truth. Well, most of it. The Terrorcons didn't even know about the cybertoxin the Reapers had infected him with.

"Oh," Banzaitron said, breezily. "I already have, trust me."

"Then stop wasting my time." Sixshot's temper flared.

"Your time. That's an excellent point. Where _did_ you go after Mumu-Obscura?"

Sixshot glowered. "Better to split up in case the Reapers reneged." That had been his thought…before the cybertoxin had taken over, before he'd blindly, feverishly, told the _Devil King_ to lock on any sort of inhabited facility. Before Jetfire. Trying to flee entanglements. Ironic.

"Ah." Banzaitron nodded, too easily. He didn't believe Sixshot. "Must have been one hell of an evasive course you ran. Switched ships and everything."

Sixshot stiffened, then rolled it into a shrug. "Could have taken longer. Since there's no mission." He hated all these words, all this talking. He hated this dance of prevarication. He missed Jetfire's voice, the warm baritone rumble a soothing river of sound, washing over him. This was discordant, jarring noise.

Banzaitron grunted, turning ostentatiously back to his console. "Hnh. I'll see if I can find something…suitable," he said. Simply, baldly. Sixshot was…dismissed.

But he knew this wasn't over.


	12. Perspectives

Ratchet was trying hard to master his anger. He wasn't mad at Optimus—of course not. And it would be unfair to take it out on him. But he was unimaginably frustrated. "He can't be serious." He did his best to ignore the waiting room full of mechs. This was important.

"He is. And it's our fault."

"We got there as soon as we could, Optimus. It takes a while to assemble a rescue team." Ratchet didn't know the specifics—that was someone else's job. But he knew Optimus blamed himself for too much. Optimus, unlike Ratchet, didn't let go of 'someone else's job'.

"Yes, but…perhaps we should not have sent him there alone."

Ratchet shrugged. "Not sure how that's supposed to work—maybe send him with someone who's a better shot?"

"Ratchet." Optimus's tone held reprimand.

"Oh, come on, Optimus. Jetfire. He hates fighting." It wasn't a judgment, simply a clinical evaluation. Ratchet would say the same about himself.

"That does not mean he is not competent." Optimus's blue eyes stared down at Ratchet. Jetfire had proved his courage in combat. But just like Ratchet, Jetfire's greatest value was off the battlefield. And Jetfire had led the Calabi-Yau mission. He was not lacking courage.

"Fine," Ratchet grudged. "Still not sure how you think having someone else up there with him would have changed anything."

"He's been alone for too long. It can't be good." Optimus dropped his optics. Jetfire had been through a lot. They all had, of course, and the best he could do, as this war stretched onward, would be to try to accommodate their damages as best he could.

And hope that in the end these deeper-than-physical scars would be worth it.

"He asked to be stationed there," Ratchet countered, "Didn't he?" His optics flicked to the window separating him from his waiting room.

"Yes, but…we should have had some scheduled contact with him, perhaps?" Optimus rubbed a hand over his helm. They had all been through a lot—himself included. But he needed to stay strong. They needed him. "This is all…speculation, though."

Ratchet gave a curt nod. "The matter is now. And I'm telling you, that he can't be serious. Or really, that he's hurt way worse than he lets on."

"He insisted that it was not," Optimus shifted, uncomfortable, "non-consensual."

"Ridiculous!" Ratchet blurted. He winced as his voice carried—one or two of the mechs in the waiting room turned.

"Something might have—must have happened we don't know about."

Ratchet paused. "There is…a condition. Where someone develops some sort of positive affection toward their captor, provided the captor didn't abuse them." He shrugged. "But it's never gone so far as interfacing." Another pause. "That I know of."

"Hmmm," Optimus considered. "If that were the case, what treatment is there?"

Ratchet's optics went distant, researching. "Patience," he said. "And not arguing with him. If we try to convince him that it was bad or that Sixshot is…Sixshot," he faltered, "It could reinforce his attachment."

Optimus nodded. "So, we should just let him alone."

Ratchet looked unhappy. "The idea is if we treat him normally, he'll start feeling safe, again, and not in that dangerous situation where he feels he has to side with Sixshot, and his own mind, as he comes out of it, will unravel the damage. Or…most of it."

Optimus sighed. "We can do that. And let him know that we are here if he needs us."

"And maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if he saw Sixshot in action. Not told what he's like, but shown. He's smart. He can make his own judgments."

Optimus nodded. "He would dismiss our telling him anything, anyway.'

Ratchet nodded. "Trick is…not an awful lot of Sixshot footage available. You know. Nature of his job and everything." He looked torn between anger and illness.

"I know."

"We can only fix the damage that comes in wanting to be fixed," Ratchet said, pointing at his window. "We can't, not even you, be responsible for everyone."

[***]

Jetfire scrolled through the repository's holding list of history. He'd had no such resource available at his research station—there simply hadn't been room in the computer system. And he felt a strong need for knowledge, more powerful than before, as though he were seeking to fill an enormous void with words, facts, theories.

"What are you looking for?" A voice behind him startled him.

His wings jolted. Jetfire turned. First Aid grinned up at him. "I-I'm sorry." He gathered his datapad, stepping aside, gesturing First Aid forward.

"Oh, no," First Aid demurred, tucking a datapad behind his back. "I can wait. I just wanted to see how you're doing."

"Fine," Jetfire said, automatically. Each time it felt more and more like a lie.

First Aid ducked his head. "I, uh, I read your file."

Oh. Jetfire's wings went rigid.

"I'm really sorry," First Aid said. "It was, I was on duty and I had forgotten to log in my report into your records and…," First Aid spread his hands, guiltily.

"I understand." He did.

"And, um, I…I think you're very brave!" First Aid blurted.

Brave. The word had not entered Jetfire's processor. "I was not," he said.

First Aid seemed to ignore his reply. "And…if you want to talk about it, you know, off the record…I'm willing."

Jetfire didn't want to talk about it. And he was beginning to feel guilty. "Thank you," he said, stiffly. "But that won't be necessary." His hands balled, helplessly, as First Aid's face fell. "It is…very kind of you." And I'm sorry, he added, feeling hideously clumsy, awkward, the way he never had around Sixshot. Irony—Sixshot could kill him; First Aid would not, could not hurt. Something was wrong, when the only mech you didn't feel judged and awkward around was an enemy.

[***]

He had fought the rising tide of desire for days, savoring the shimmering tang across his net as a remembrance. But it had surged, rising more insistently, the tang resolving to a sharp ache. Wanting, needing release. Systems so long dormant resisted being returned to dormancy, firing at him when he most wanted to concentrate, or in idle moments when he let his thoughts slip.

With a certain sense of shame, he reached into his personal storage and tugged out the thin gloves. He shivered, pulling them on, reaching over to lock the door to his impromptu lab. It was kindness itself that they'd carved this miniature laboratory out of the base just for him, but…he could not help himself. He settled himself awkwardly on the ground, his wings already prickling with aroused heat against the cool floor.

He glossed a hand over his opposite shoulder, tracing his fingerpads over the espalier, feeling the touch like a stranger's hand, light and gentle. His hand drifted farther back, skimming the top of the wingstrut, and then up. He tilted his head away, letting his fingers dip into the gap between his armor to the underlying mechanisms.

His vent cycle stuttered, optics dimming. And this was not his hand, but SIxshot's, and the other mech's optics were devouring his arousal. If he dimmed his vid field enough, he could almost convince himself Sixshot was there and that the cool foreign touch of the insulated glove was Sixshot's, and this whole thing was for Sixshot's arousal, his desire a wanted display.

His other hand moved over his chassis, over the chest plating, before sliding down the blue glass of his cockpit canopy. Sixshot had liked the canopy—or, at least, Sixshot paid it a lot of attention, curling his fingers around the blue glass, teasing at the insulated joins.

Jetfire could feel the charge beginning to build, like stardust swirling over his sensor net, warm and cold both at once, tingling sharp and yet somehow soft, gentle.

He let his hands continue to wander, as though they were not his, but visitors to foreign terrain, as though they were Sixshot's hands. He bent one leg, resting his foot on the ground, one hand delving into the armor of his thigh—the top surface, then over the edge to the thinner inner plates, then upward, slowly, tauntingly, toward the narrow gap. He felt his mouthplates tense, a surge of arousal pounding through him.

And, he thought, and. And Sixshot's watching this. Maybe…maybe he's making me do this, just feeding off the display, wanting me to pleasure myself, to touch and tease myself while he watches, enjoys, desire building up behind those red optics. Maybe he's…over there, in the shadow, and watching.

Jetfire's frame shuddered at the thought, and the charge seemed to double, imagining his performance was a display for someone else's consumption.

His vents grew even more ragged, uneven, his wings shifting against the floor. His EM field began to glow, faintly blue, sparkling with current over his white body.

Sixshot liked his canopy: Jetfire flipped it open, arching his back into the touch, letting his fingers glide under the transparent glass. The tempered underside was far more sensitive than the outside, kept protected from the elements of flight, but alive with sensors. A moan escaped his vocalizer as he traced an intricate pattern on the glass, inside and out, the charge rising and tingling and eddying, pushing him, spinning, twisting, toward overload. His body tensed, his EM field shimmering more brightly, silverblue sparks flashing across the field, anticipating, reaching for release.

"Jetfire."

The voice cut over his comm. Jetfire jolted, startled back to the present place, the present moment, his systems howling in frustration. He clawed his way up to his console, body trembling with need.

"Jetfire, on," he managed, his voice unsteady.

Optimus's face resolved on the screen. "I didn't—did I contact you at a bad time?"

"N-no," Jetfire said, tightly. "What can I help you with?" In his cortex, the image of Sixshot, watching, longing, needing him dissolved like a mirage, like a dream tearing itself from his grasp.

"We have a scientific data collection burst inbound for later. I was wondering," Optimus said, with false innocence, "if you would be interested in being in the research team."

It was worded as an offer, but it was a demand, Jetfire knew—there would be a penalty, a price, if he gave the wrong response. "Yes, sir. I would be honored."

The moment stretched, and Jetfire could feel Optimus's gaze on him, searching, probing. "I'll," Optimus said, finally, "let you get back to your…work."

The phrasing perplexed Jetfire, but Optimus had cut the connection before he could ask a question. But when Jetfire looked down, he could see the shimmer of pre-overload dancing over his aroused frame, and the conspicuous angle of his canopy glass, and…one of the cuffs of his gloves had doubtless been within Optimus's line of view.

He blazed with shame: Optimus knew what he was doing here, had caught him in the act, trembling on the brink of release, mortifyingly alone.

Jetfire dropped back, heavily, onto the floor, the aroused charge of his EM field suddenly going sour and flat. He stared at his gloved hands with distaste, disgust, wings drooping.

This was…ruining him.


	13. Interception

"Load," Sixshot said, as the door to the Terrorcons' quarters shut behind him. "Have a mission."

"We do?" Hun-Grr said around a mouthful of metal chips, surreptitiously wiping his crumbed-up hand down his leg. "First I've heard of it."

That would be because Sixshot had just managed to stare it out of Banzaitron. It had taken thirteen solars, but it turned out that staring umoving and unblinking at Banzaitron for his entire dutycycle day after day brought results. Finally. And it wasn't much of a mission, but it was a mission. Which meant—Sixshot not sitting around feeling like he was slowly going crazy. Time to do something…he could actually do.

"Not much of a mission," Rippersnapper muttered. "Always send us to some stinkin' slag hole."

Cutthroat shrugged. "Better'n sitting around this stinkin' slag hole," he said, pointedly, eyeballing Blot, who was on his knees scrubbing at a stain on the floor. Only justice in this world was that even Blot eventually got 'clean up after Blot' duty. "Least we get to kill something."

"I like missions!" Blot blurted, clutching the wet rag. "Get to go to cool places and do stuff! You know…other stuff than cleaning." He drooped.

"Yeah," Sixshot said. Just because he felt he had to say something. He moved forward, holding an input rod out to Hun-Grr. "Specs."

"Hey, uh…thanks," Hun-Grr said, a little nervously, as he slotted the rod into the main display console. A schematic of an Autobot courier ship popped up.

"Courier!" Cutthroat whined. "Means we can't kill them."

"Told you this would suck, somehow," Rippersnapper muttered.

"No." Sixshot tipped his head to Hun-Grr, who read off the objectives.

"No way, Cutthroat," Hun-Grr took his cue. "Just keep a few heads intact."

Sinnertwin sidled over to the console, not-so-subtly wrapping one arm around Sixshot's waist, leaning his head against Sixshot's rib strut. "So, what's the tactical plan?"

One of Sixshot's vertical stabilizers twitched at the unexpected touch, but he mastered himself before lashing out at the Terrorcon.

"Well," Hun-Grr began scrolling through the options Banzaitron had laid out. Huh, Sixshot thought. Mechs actually pay attention to those things? In Sixshot's experience, most battle plans sort of imploded after the first return of fire. "Looks like we're the diversion, while Sixshot gets the real job done." He sounded a little disappointed.

Sixshot leaned forward, toggling the plan forward. "This one." This one had him as the diversion and the Terrorcons infiltrating the ship in three teams. "Would separate you, though." Problem if they needed to combine. But, on the plus side, Sixshot wouldn't have to hold back. He was…not good at holding back.

"Faster, though." Hun-Grr considered the two plans.

Sixshot nodded. There was that.

"I like missions!" Blot beamed up at Sixshot, twining his damp fingers around Sixshot's right arm. Ummm, all right.

"Frag," Rippersnapper said. "If we can pull this off…?" He didn't need to finish the thought for the other Terrorcons. If they could do this right, it could change everything. More respect, better missions. No more like that one run through the sewers of Bantel-Viam.

And with Sixshot's help?

Sinnertwin leaned forward to glare around Sixshot's torso at Blot. "Mine," he hissed.

"Mine, too!" Blot said. "I'm totally on the rotation list." He purred, bending to lick Sixshot's wrist.

"Yeah," Cutthroat said. "Not just yours, Sinnertwin."

Not…anyone's, Sixshot thought. Well…. Jetfire...

He growled, at his own stupid train of thought, twitching out of their grasp. "Mission. _Devil King_ leaves in three cycles." He slipped past them, headed toward the door, turning to meet Hun-Grr's optics, which jumped guiltily to his face from…his aft?

Oh, this mission suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

[***]

"You know he's doing this to help us out," a voice echoed through the docking ramp as the Terrorcons boarded the _Devil King_. "Cause he likes us."

"Likes me best."

"In your dreams."

"Would you shut up and load?" Unmistakably Hun-Grr's voice. "He can hear us, you know."

The chatter squealed to a sudden, embarrassed halt.

Sixshot buried himself ostentatiously in the pre-flight checklist. It had been the first time he'd flown the _Devil King_ since Mumu-Obscura. Since before…Jetfire. So much had happened since the last time he had touched these controls. Everything felt familiar and strange, both at once.

He had a brief, wild thought as the Terrorcons settled themselves in the cargo bay, of Jetfire perching in the jumpseat behind him. His wings would nearly scrape the inner sides of the cockpit cabin, perhaps one white knee would jut to one side of Sixshot's pilot's chair. Watching Sixshot pilot the craft, maybe asking questions, or just talking in that soothing, deep voice of his. Sixshot shook his head, dispelling the image before he turned to look.

Losing it, Sixshot. Not good. Need to focus. This is exactly why you wanted a mission—get this out of your head. Do the one thing you're good at doing.

Hun-Grr stepped up into the cabin. "Ready to go," he reported.

Sixshot nodded, keeping his optics on the controls, running through the last of the pre-flight diagnostics.

"Hey, uhhh," Hun-Grr said, unevenly. "I don't know if you heard the others yapping before…."

"No big deal."

"Yeah, well. Honestly. We did want to thank you. You know. You fought to give us this opportunity to, you know, prove ourselves and…yeah. Thanks."

Not for you. Was for me. Banzaitron had insisted on the Terrorcons, like some sort of bizarre 'make you regret getting what you want' punishment. "Banzaitron," Sixshot muttered. "Thank him."

Hun-Grr made some disbelieving sound, but added, quietly, "I'll make sure we're prepped for departure. And we'll make you proud."

Hun-Grr's words actually rang some guilty echo in Sixshot's processor. He shook that off, too. Focus. Concentrate. Mission.

[***]

There was a reason, Sixshot realized, that he normally worked alone. Coordinating attacks meant…coordination. Meant talking. Too damn much.

Though he had to admit, the Terrorcons held their own. Hun-Grr kept them on a tight timetable, keeping Blot with himself to take the courier himself, while sending the other three to cause generalized mayhem on the ship. Blot kept a running commentary of whatever apparently grabbed his attention, Hun-Grr kept calling out time hacks, Cutthroat broadcast his latest dire bodily threat, while Rippersnapper just cursed randomly and Sinnertwin got in arguments with himself. It was…interesting. He did not need to, thankfully, squeeze a word in edgewise.

Sixshot, meanwhile, had outflown several dogfights—one disadvantage the Autobots had was that all of their ships were piloted, not sentient. The only aerial Autobot he'd ever met had been…Jetfire.

He was begin to get sick of everything coming back to Jetfire.

He poured his irritation into his attack, cutting short the toying phase, flipping behind them, blowing their wings, their engines methodically, zipping away just long enough for them to think he was just going to leave them crippled, before dashing back and punching through the power core, demolishing the ships in the excruciatingly slow explosions of zero-gee vacuum. The strange flashes he'd always had, the visions of violence that had blazed over his sensors, folding the present into a brutal future, roared to life, demanding to be made real. It felt as if something uncoiled itself, spreading through his systems like energon, or the roots of some vile organic plant, honing his reflexes, sharpening his aim, turning him into a moving maelstrom of destruction.

He dimly heard the Terrorcons do another time hack, checking coordinates. Then. /Sixshot?/

/…on./He was not used to this. At all.

/Status?/

Oh. Right. /Available./ He could break off from the last three pitiful little strafers at any time.

/Done here. You can stop, uh, diverting./ Hun-Grr said, hesitantly.

Sixshot muttered, part of him resisting, hating, the idea of leaving an enemy alive. His job was to destroy. Eradicate. /Fine. Courier?/

/Retrieved, and for the moment intact./

/Not for much longer if he doesn't keep his slaggin' mouth shut./ Sinnertwin snarled.

So not Sixshot's concern. Dead or alive, as long as the cortex was intact, Banzaitron would call this mission a success. /Right./ He wheeled away from his latest target, after firing one final shot at the afterburner, crippling it if not destroying it. A short hop back to the _Devil King_ and then a sweep back to retrieve the Terrorcons and….

/Watch out!/ A burst of cursing and then some hot popping sounds and then a howling series of crunches. /Fraggit! Sixsh-!/

The courier ship's main gun shot a blast of blue-white energon, faster than Sixshot could evade, that tore through his armor, punching through into his stabilization systems. His systems lit up, white with pain. His heavy, modified alloy armor could not feel—but the sensors under it were agonizingly alive and they screeched to life, blinding his vid field, dampening his audio, reducing his world to the confines of his frame.

/Sixshot! You all right?/ The concern in Hun-Grr's voice cut through everything. Frag.

/Fine. Close enough./ Sixshot shut down those systems with brutal efficiency. Get that looked at…later. Now, though, he had more important things to do. Pain was something for later.

/Sorry! Really. The courier, he kept tapping something out on his arm and Cutthroat thought that it was just to be annoying but it turns out it was some sort of code…thing…and…./

/Courier's dead./ Better be.

/Yeah. Uh, Cutthroat doesn't like being wrong./

Well, neither did Sixshot. /Head's all we need./

/Head's intact. Blot grabbed it./

Good enough. Sixshot fired his one remaining thruster, launching at the ship, forcing a transformation as he swept by the barrel of the gun, tearing it from its mounting, ignoring as best he could the wobble from his damaged leg. Sparks fizzled in the vacuum of space as he ripped the gun free, swinging it to bring its heavy mounting down on the hull of the ship like a club, aiming for the comm arrays. /Be right with you./


	14. Repercussions

Jetfire lacked words to describe how he was feeling, watching the footage unspool across the video screen. He hated that he was already questioning Optimus's motive for bringing him here. He was a scientist, not a warrior, not a tactician. But he'd been asked to see this…why?

It had to be Sixshot. It had to be some attempt to 'remind' him about Sixshot's brutality. The scene played out in numb silence, captured only from the front arrays of the crippled courier ship, as Sixshot spun and dove in ruthless pursuit of the small escort craft. It was supposed to, Jetfire thought, make him disgusted: Sixshot heartlessly killing so many Autobots, mechs that Jetfire perhaps knew.

But it didn't. All he could think was how beautifully Sixshot flew for all his ungainly mass, and how skillfully he maneuvered in the vacuum and then some sweet poignant regret that of all the things they had done, they had never flown together.

He shifted, uncomfortably, knowing he was having the wrong reaction, knowing that the way his vents caught as he watched the screen had nothing to do with the damaged mechs, the crippled strafers and escorts, but a fierce longing and a sense of possessiveness—that is mine. I had that…once.

"It's okay," a voice murmured, softly, just as a gentle pressure registered on his arm. First Aid, looking up at him, optics open and blue with concern.

"I am not…upset. For me," he amended hastily. Because the loss of life was truly regrettable. But it was also what Sixshot did. Who he was. And it was somehow hard to reject that, especially when Jetfire thought that he'd been accepting the same thing all along, merely in lesser degrees, from the Autobots. They all killed: Ironihide, Optimus, even Ratchet. Even Jetfire himself. They all engaged in the brutal game of combat. Just because their numbers were smaller, did that make them 'better'? Did that make them 'right'? Did that make Sixshot, then, somehow odious?

"You can be," First Aid offered. "It might help."

Oh. Another who thought he was…. Jetfire shook his head. "I am fine. But thank you for your concern."

The hand tightened around his wrist. "You can always talk to me," the small jet said. Jetfire blinked, feeling, if possible, even more self-conscious. Strange how he never felt that way around Sixshot.

"Thank you," he said, hollowly, and then his vents caught entirely as a blue flash illuminated the screen and the courier ship's main gun lanced a massive energy bolt right at Sixshot. He became acutely aware of the others around him, his audio almost crackling with their attention. He forced himself to show no reaction, to force the next vent cycle. It felt like a betrayal.

Sixshot grew huge on the screen, unfolding in a swift, breathtaking elegance into the mode Jetfire remembered all too well and all too intimately. He could feel the arch of the white thigh against him even as he saw it sparking with damage, energon and other fluids vaporizing into frozen crystal dust almost instantly, powdering space with fine glitter. And the body braced itself, wrenching the gun free from its mounting. The camera juddered from the force used.

Jetfire couldn't tear his optics off the image as Sixshot approached, swinging the gun like a club, his optics lit with a red inner light that was somehow familiar to Jetfire. And then the weapon struck and the camera went black.

There was a moment of stunned silence in the room.

"Not his usual type of mission," Ironhide ventured, eventually.

"Indeed," Optimus said.

"There were survivors," Prowl added. "That is atypical for his missions."

"Not _many _survivors," Ratchet corrected.

"Still, it is unusual," Optimus said. And they looked, almost as one, at Jetfire.

"I—I don't know anything," he said, helplessly, feeling a sense of vertigo, teetering on a razor-edge. "He never talked about upcoming missions." He felt himself wince, weighing one betrayal against another.

"Mechs died out there," Ironhide said, optics hard and flat, like a blunt blade.

Jetfire felt the whipcrack of guilt. "I-I don't think he had a lot of say in his missions. He did as he was ordered."

"By who?"

Jetfire felt a sinking terror, like falling, but in slow motion, the way a fall from a very great height feels when things are too far away to measure against. "I don't know. He never said."

"He never said anything?" Ironhide's tone was dubious.

Well, not much of anything. Jetfire shook his head. "I am sorry." He was telling the truth, and while he was glad there was nothing to tell, he felt a worm of shame that he would have kept his silence either way.

"He told you…nothing useful?" Prowl leaned forward. "Weaknesses, vulnerabilities?"

That one confidence of Sixshot's flashes of madness writhed guiltily in Jetfire's conscience. "None I can think of," he said, quietly, feeling his core temp spike with a new, sudden self-loathing. "If I…if I think of any, however," he said, lamely, trying to mitigate. First Aid's hand squeezed his, and he never felt more like withdrawing from touch.

[***]

Sixshot growled at the Terrorcons. Well, most of them. Hun-Grr was up front, flying the ship—_his_ ship!—while the others were ranged around Sixshot, lying on the floor of the cargo bay. He didn't need them, especially not staring at him this way. Weak, torn open.

"You do it," Rippersnapper nudged Cutthroat.

"No way. Uhhh, Sinnertwin." Cutthroat jabbed him with an elbow. Sinnertwin snapped at him, ferally.

"I'll do it," Blot said, pushing forward.

"What?" the three others blurted.

"I'll do it. Someone needs to do it. None of you want to. And I do the stuff none of you want to do." Blot nodded, pleased with this display of logic. Huh, they all thought he was, like, dumb.

"No way." Rippersnapper had obviously reconsidered the pros and cons of the thing. Pro: touching Sixshot. Con: perhaps getting killed in the process. Sixshot did not look like he was in the mood to play patient. But whoa. That would be hot. "I'll do it."

Blot looked…whiny, in addition to his usual 'slimy' and 'smelly', so Rippersnapper added. "But you can, uh, help or something."

"Don't need help," Sixshot muttered. "Auto-repair."

"But Sixshot," Cutthroat said. "Kinda blew a hole in your leg."

Sixshot struggled up to his elbows, looking at the injury. No longer in the frigid cold of space, repair nanites were blue-silver twinkles over his damaged components instead of dusting off in powdery glitter. "Seen worse." His power core hadn't even bumped his temp into the critical range. Still, a full on pulse-laser from a cruiser was nothing to shake off.

"Even the Reapers didn't get you this good," Sinnertwin said. Again, with Mumu. The others glared him down. "Umm, yeah."

"Reapers got me," Sixshot said, flatly. "Different way." Fraggin'cybertoxin. Without which, though…. His face twitched in irritation. Weakness. Jetfire was a weapon, a weakness, more damaging than any chemical compound. If anyone knew….

"Got you how?" Cutthroat, with all the tact of a…whatever he was.

"Toxin." Enough words. Sixshot pushed up to sitting. He did not want to talk about it. At all. And anyone other than the Terrorcons might have picked up on that. He glared around the half-circle. "Better now."

Rippersnapper ran a multimeter over the wound. "EM's a bit off."

Sixshot shrugged. "Degausser got hit." He could feel the change in his magnetic field. Good thing he rarely depended on it. Though Jetfire had…noticed it.

Rippersnapper peered into the gap in the armor. "Oh. Got it. I can fix it." He looked up—he'd be rummaging high up in Sixshot's thigh and apparently thought permission was a good idea.

It was.

Sixshot nodded. "Repair supplies in that hatch." One of the—few—perks of his job. Personal ship. Customized stores.

And the rest decided to stare at him as Rippersnapper and Blot got to work. Sixshot braced himself against the pain. His armor was too heavy and dense for the sensor cilia to penetrate fully, so it had overcompensated by hypersensitizing his internal systems. Another thing only Jetfire knew.

And not like he'd volunteered that, either.

[***]

_An involuntary growl escaped Sixshot's vocalizer. Jetfire stopped, freezing immediately, the wrench hanging a few microns over the exposed line. He'd been letting Jetfire do that refit. It had been too long, and lying on his back, rib strut exposed, green armor laid open like a clamshell, Sixshot was remembering why. _

_"I am sorry," Jetfire said, almost a reflex._

_"Nothing." _

_"No, it is something," Jetfire corrected, his optics blue and insistent. "It should not hurt."_

_"Doesn't hurt." A lie. Sixshot looked away. _

_"Sixshot," Jetfire pushed, dipping his head, optics seeking out Sixshot's. "Please don't lie to me." _

_Another growl, for a totally different reason. "Used to it," he said. It wasn't a lie. Not entirely. _

_"It doesn't mean it's right," Jetfire's brow furrowed under his helm. "These are subdermal systems. They should not hurt."_

_A shrug. _

_Jetfire lay the wrench down, his optics serious. "Is this why you do not like being touched? Because it hurts you?"_

_Sixshot snorted. "No." He rapped the heavy armor of his chassis with one hand. "Barely registers. Alloy." _

_"Hm." Jetfire tilted his head, studying the exposed systems. And Sixshot suddenly felt less like a patient but a bit more like…science. He didn't know if it was an improvement. "Sensor overcompensation," he said, nodding, satisfied. He looked over to Sixshot's face, lighting up. "We can fix that." _

_Sixshot shifted. Fixed. He was not at all sure he liked this 'lying down' position. Hadn't liked it at the start. Really didn't like it now. "Design tolerance," he said, trying to push himself upright. "Don't feel pain." Part of the whole idea. How else to build an unstoppable war machine than to make him incapable of registering the normal signals that told a body it was going beyond its limits? _

_"You do feel pain," Jetfire said. He prodded at the exposed cable, gently, watching for the wince. And then he moved his finger into a gentler stroke down the cable, as if trying to wipe away his point now that he'd made it. "And it seems a high price to pay." It was the closest Jetfire had come to talking about what Sixshot did. Mutually awkward—Sixshot destroyed worlds. Killed Autobots. Jetfire tipped his head, considering. "Does that…is that what your fascination is with touch? Because you seem to calibrate down well." His wings gave a little quiver of remembered pleasure. _

_Sixshot's optics were transfixed on the wingtips. He shrugged. "Don't know." A lie. He did know, and that was precisely the source—well, one of them—of his fascination with the shuttle: the exquisite reactions that seemed to ripple across metal skin designed to be supersensitive to pressure and heat and ion streams and a thousand other measurements for interstellar flight. Thinking about it drew his hands into action, one reaching for the sensitive join of Jetfire's elbow. Jetfire gave a pleased little chirr before his optics glinted, an unaccustomed spark of mischief, and he stood up, pulling away. Only little friction noises from his ailerons revealed his desire as he bent over Sixshot, pushing him down, fingers splayed on one shoulder, while his other stroked the inside of Sixshot's opened armor. _

_"Jetfire," Sixshot warned, but his body juddered at the rush of sensation, swirling, sparkling over his net. _

_Jetfire gave a smile, tinged at the edge with a smug sort of delight. "Consider this research," he said. _

_"Research," Sixshot muttered, but he let his hands fall away. _

_Jetfire's grin grew, triumphant, his hands bolder, the one on Sixshot's shoulder curling into the exposed part of Sixshot's throat, the thumb skimming along Sixshot's chin. "An experiment." _

_"Experiments need controls," Sixshot said, struggling not to succumb to the feathering, gentle touches. How had Jetfire known the interior of his armor was so sensitive, when Sixshot did not know it himself? He vented, ragged, hating and wanting the warm victory that lit across Jetfire's face. _

_"Oh," Jetfire teased, "I have control." He dipped his head in, letting his EM field slide like silk over Sixshot's. "You don't need any." He seemed almost giddy with his boldness, at one level aware that in any other circumstance he'd cringe at the lines, but too caught up in it to care, almost intoxicated with his own audacity and the heady rush of bringing so much pleasure to Sixshot. He slid down Sixshot's prone frame, until Sixshot felt an electric lick at his open armor, and then the strangely familiar weight and tingle of a glossa down his exposed struts. Places that were not designed for this kind of contact, suddenly licked, teased, nipped. Jetfire may not have been an expert, his kisses and nips awkward and new, but Sixshot's systems didn't know any better. He fought signals trying to tell him this was a threat, trying to lay himself open, available for Jetfire as the white mech was for him. _

_His sensor net spiked with contradictory signals—pain, pleasure, delight, threat, swirling together in a dizzying rush, his hands clenching on either side of the table, warping the metal, as Jetfire continued his playful 'experiment'. He hissed his desire, cooling system thrumming on. He wanted Jetfire on top of him, below him, anywhere near him, satiny armor sliding under his fingers, feeling the vibration of those wings, tracing the line between red and white up and down the seams before his palms slid flat and gentle over the broad panels. He could almost hear the sound Jetfire would make—a little squirming squeak, the wings humming with taut tension trying to hold in his desire. His hands ached from wanting to touch. _

_Sixshot's hands leapt up—reflexes trained for other assaults working here as well—catching Jetfire's wings. "Enough experiment," he said, throatily, hauling up on the wingtips, hands hard and insistent, and brooking no rejection. Jetfire knew better than to thwart him, allowing himself to be pulled up the chassis, letting his blue canopy slide, in that way that always caught at Sixshot's desires, over the Phase Sixer's chassis. _

_"You wanted something?" Jetfire teased—surrendering physically, perhaps, but not utterly, even as Sixshot's hands closed on the narrowing between his upper and lower wings. _

_Sixshot snorted. Dumb question. But he'd have to make it more obvious, then. "You." _

[***]

Sixshot flinched back to himself, an agonizing red lance of pain across his net. He wasn't with the shuttle, on that blasted asteroid station. Though he was, again, on his back, systems exposed.

"Sorry!" Rippersnapper yelped, as though anticipating a blow. "Just…jammed really hard in there. Bit of shrapnel." One of his hands was lodged high into Sixshot's thigh casing.

Sixshot sat up. "Get it myself." He paused, trying to shake off the last cobwebs of memory, sending a command to online the rest of his pain array before he thrust his hand in under the armor. He dug in blind, tearing at cables and hydraulics heedlessly, trying to summon enough physical pain to override the sudden discontent that swept over him.

His optics flashed white with the collision of so many alarm signals. Still, it wasn't enough. He growled, tearing the shrapnel fragment free in a slick cut of energon and pain.

"Whoa," Cutthroat murmured. "Hardcore." Even he quelled at the look in Sixshot's optics.


	15. Missed Connections

Jetfire fretted. Sixshot had been injured. The scene played out like a vile loop in his cortex. The blue bolt aiming for Sixshot's flight mode, the energy rippling over it, bubbling the metal, the horrible way the flight path had suddenly wobbled and lurched. He felt nauseous.

But Sixshot was…not dead. He knew that. He'd seen the Phase Sixer take out the main comm himself, saw strength and fury and life behind those optics. Sixshot was not dying, not then. And he would not.

Still, the sight of him in pain was…devastating to Jetfire. He wanted to be there, to replace the damaged armor, to clean out the damaged under-systems. Flashes of Sixshot's systems came back to him—long neglected, corroded cabling, grease-gunked joints. He wouldn't be repaired correctly unless Jetfire were there to do it.

No. That was treason. Or close enough to it that it didn't matter. You did not aid the enemy. Especially repairing him from injuries he got killing your own side. It had been different, before. That was the Reapers, not Autobots who had injured Sixshot. And he had come to you for help.

Or…close enough.

Jetfire's wings drooped, and he was fiercely glad there was no one around to see them, see him.

And a worm of a thought began threading its way up his processor, from some hidden, unseen depth. He had Sixshot's comm freq. He'd gotten it while doing a full resonance scan. He had all of Sixshot's schematics in his cortex.

…which he should have handed over to Optimus. Or Prowl. Or Ironhide. Or…anyone. A proper Autobot. But he hadn't; he'd hoarded it all to himself. Still had. And now….

He keyed the frequency code, taking a moment to create the subroutine for the variable phase encryption. And then, he cycled a nervous vent. He had no right, but he had to know. He sent the execute command.

A hazy click.

"On."

Jetfire's systems trilled. Whatever words he'd been thinking about saying seemed to shiver from his vocalizer queue. "…Sixshot." The word came out as a whisper, barely audible over the encryption hiss.

A pause, calculating. "Jetfire."

"Yes." This suddenly seemed like an incredibly stupid idea. What had he been thinking? "I…are you all right?"

Another pause, another moment where he could almost feel Sixshot probing him, testing the connection and…something more. "Fine."

The moment stretched, until Jetfire's awkwardness seemed to scream with noise. "I…I saw you get injured," he confessed.

"Courier mission."

"Yes."

"And." Sixshot's voice was hard, but almost brittle. Pushing Jetfire away, as if too afraid of what might happen if he get too close.

"And." Jetfire squirmed. His systems were tingling just from the sound of Sixshot's voice, his wing panels aching for touch. "I want to see you," he breathed, the words pouring out of him in a rush.

Sixshot grunted. "Stupid."

"I know." Jetfire clenched his hands in helpless fists. "I-I had nothing to do with last time. The others coming. It wasn't a trap."

"Know that."

Jetfire felt relief rush from him in a gust. "I just didn't want…you know…that I'd betrayed you."

A strained silence. Jetfire longed for some sort of signal—Sixshot's voice or at least his face. Jetfire had learned to read a hundred different emotional states from the slightest shift of SIxshot's mask, the angle of his head, the motion of his hands.

His hands. Jetfire felt a tingle over his net, his ventilation unsteady.

"What."

"I…," Jetfire hesitated. If he disconnected now, he'd never have the nerve to comm him again. If he thought about it, he'd talk himself out of it for any of a half a hundred reasons. "I ache," he said, the words forcing themselves like stones from his throat. "I want you." He swallowed, hard, a knot of something like terror building in him. He never felt like this in combat, even the few times they had wanted him to fight. He'd never been afraid of dying; he just didn't like killing. He'd felt a reasonable concern, but nothing like this. If Sixshot rejected him…he felt it would tear his armor off. He felt he already had, and was standing naked, burning in the open air.

Another long silence. Then, "Can't talk now." And the line went dead.

Jetfire dropped down against the seat, unaware until then that he'd been holding himself tightly, leaning forward, as if reaching through the comm lines for Sixshot. He felt unsettled, awkward, embarrassed.

But, his scientist's mind said, that wasn't a rejection. That wasn't a denial. Take it for what it's worth, he said to himself. And try to hold out hope. Sixshot had his comm freq now. All he had to do was sit, and wait for Sixhot to comm him back.

All he had to do.

[***]

"Sixshot." Banzaitron drummed his fingers on the console, amused.

Sixshot looked up, focusing his optics into a glower.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Sixshot solidified his glower. "What did you want." Banzaitron had summoned him here as soon as the _Devil King_ had docked, only to keep him waiting. And then…Jetfire. Frag. Sixshot felt his entire systems unsettled. Just when he thought he'd taken all that energy, all that disruption, and channeled it into the Terrorcons. Just when he thought he'd finally worked Jetfire out of his systems, substituted him with something else…he was back. And now Banzaitron on top of it.

Banzaitron smiled. "Oh, I'm sorry. After Action Review? You've never had one before?" He curled the corners of his mouth as though Sixshot were slightly stupid. Of course, Phase Six operations didn't get AARs—Megatron was sufficiently pleased with destruction, not needing to fine tune the weapons.

"Nothing to review." Nothing Sixshot wanted to review. Which was the same difference as far as he was concerned.

Banzaitron leaned back, optics studying Sixshot. Something was going on behind those flat red optics, Banzaitron thought. Something…interesting. "How about you…humor me."

Sixshot did his best to push the last tendrils of the shimmering disruption that was Jetfire's voice out of his processor. He needed to be sharp, now. Banzaitron was up to something. Even more than usual. He nodded, dropping into a seat on the other side of Banzaitron's console. "Achieved primary objective," he opened. See? Not hiding anything.

…which was the clearest sign he was trying to hide something, Banzaitron thought. "Left rather more of the ship functional than optimal."

Sixshot steadied his gaze. "Unclear mission parameters."

"We have to specify what you do with an enemy, now?" Black sarcasm. Banzaitron smirked as Sixshot's optics traveled over his face plating, as if searching for a weakness.

Sixshot stared him down, or tried to. "Ship was crippled. Comm was down." He did the last part personally. "They were going to know they got hit and the courier taken sooner or later."

"Later would have been better."

Sixshot shrugged.

Banzaitron leaned forward, his smile turning predatory. "You're really a simple creature, aren't you, Sixshot?"

"Sure." Whatever. Sixshot was willing to be a moron in Banzaitron's optics. As long as he got his missions. And as long as Banzaitron kept his distance.

Banzaitron laughed. "Agreeable, at least." The laugh had an edge under it, sheathing a blade. "So," he said, shifting gears, the same way he would adjust a stance when fighting. "How are the Terrorcons?"

"Fine." Sixshot gave a bemused shrug. "I guess."

"Not so fine," Banzaitron corrected. He shoved a datapad across the console at him.

Sixshot glanced down. Oh.

"So. Maybe I should ask…how's Sinnertwin?"

"Apparently injured."

"By…?" Banzaitron did a deliberately terrible job of hiding the smirk.

"…Not aware he was so fragile."

"Well," Banzaitron said. "Inexperience will do that." His optics rested on Sixshot's face, amused.

Sixshot went still. Stiller than usual. Determined to outwait Banzaitron's little…joke.

Banzaitron laughed easily. "I do realize how ridiculous it is asking a Terrorcon to exercise some self-restraint." His optics quirked. "Or a Phase Six specialist, apparently."

Sixshot fought a growl.

Banzaitron waited. The moment stretched, the smile on his face growing brittle. Then, "Call me a romantic," Banzaitron said, his mouth quirking ironically, "But I do love a good virginity story." He rested his chin on a cradle of his folded knuckles, optics bright, expectant.

He was enjoying this…a bit too much. "Not relevant."

"Oh, but you've never done an AAR before, remember? All kinds of things are…relevant."

Sixshot's fist jumped, wanting nothing more than to shatter that red armor on Banzaitron's face. "Go easier on Sinnertwin in the future," he mumbled. Fragger never told him anything.

"Not the point, Sixshot. Who'd you lose it to." The amusement had gone underground.

Sixshot bridled, aware the Banzaitron was pushing buttons just to push, just to see Sixshot squirm. Fine. He refused to squirm. "An Autobot."

"Kinky." The red optics spiraled. "He's dead, right?"

"No." Banzaitron would find out anyway. Everything. This was just a delay. Maybe it made a difference.

"Ah." Nothing more.

Sixshot shifted. Banzaitron was thinking something.

"And he has a name."

"Everyone does," Sixshot said, venturing an evasion. "We…didn't talk much." The last thing he wanted to contemplate was…Banzaitron and Jetfire.

Banzaitron nodded, his shoulders lowering, relieved, face spreading into a grin. There was just…no way it didn't look ghastly on his face. "For a klik," he confessed, "thought you'd lost it."

"Haven't," Sixshot growled, all honesty now. "Why I want a mission."

Banzaitron sat back in his chair, dragging the datapad back across the console. "I'll see what I can do."

Dismissed. And this time, Sixshot was more than happy to leave. He stood up.

"Oh, and Sixshot?"

"What." He stopped in the doorway, half turning.

"Go a little easier on the Terrorcons."

[***]

Jetfire discovered a new kind of agony, waiting for his comm to chime. He'd imagined every possibility for delay, every excuse. A meeting. Training. A mission? Even his wildest rationalizations and excuses exhausted themselves, and his comm line remained agonizingly clear. Sixshot wasn't calling. He'd never, Jetfire realized, actually said he would. Jetfire had just pinned so much promise that he had heard what he had so desperately wanted to hear—or twisted it into something he could want to hear. But still, he made excuses.

Jetfire restrained himself from trying to access intel reports of recent contact, afraid to read of more Autobot deaths at Sixshot's hands; more afraid to read of Sixshot's death.

No, he would have heard. They would not let something so momentous as a Phase-Sixer's death go without wide report.

It was a bitter consolation.

He stared, gloomily, at the datapad, hand idly toying with his energon cube. Around him, the dining facility bustled with noise and chatter and color. Only he seemed to sit in a sort of singularity of silence and loneliness.

He dropped his gaze back to the datapad, at the title of the article he'd called up. Yes. High heat superconductivity in crystalline alloys. Useful discovery, infinite potentials for application. He forced himself to concentrate.

"Hi?"

Jetfire looked up. First Aid. "Hello," he said, withdrawing, wings edging forward.

"Can I sit here with you?"

"I, um…yes." He had no reason to say no. And he should, he argued with himself, open to opportunities to make friends. It was just ironic that only now were any of them seemingly making any effort. "I'm sorry," he added. "I'm just…I was alone on the station. It's hard to readjust." That sounded plausible, and more than half true.

The smaller mech settled himself down next to Jetfire, craning his head at the datapad. "Is this what you were researching at the archive the other day?"

"Yes," Jetfire said. A long pause. Jetfire squirmed, and the thought hit him—what if Sixshot commed him now? "It is…interesting."

First Aid looked dubious. "Do you…have a project you're working on?" A question radiating innocence. For once, no ulterior motive.

"I have my notes," Jetfire said. "And I am waiting to acquire some of the materials—my ongoing experiments had to be abandoned back on the asteroid." They had left in a mad hurry, barely managing to scoop up Jetfire's records before shepherding him, numb and slow moving and exactly, he realized now, the big, clumsy, slow idiot they'd probably always seen him as.

"Can you go back for them?"

Jetfire blinked. He'd…never thought of that. "I suppose." Would it be good to see that place again where so many things had happened? Or would it just make this ache worse? He thought of the mech Sixshot had killed. The body had come back but…had they left the stain and shrapnel on the floor?

"Are you afraid? I'm sure Optimus can put together a team to, you know, go with you."

Afraid. A team. No. "I will consider it," he said. "Thank you for the idea."

First Aid nodded, grinning, taking up his ration cube. "Sometimes it helps, you know, being outside the situation. You can see stuff more clearly. That's what Ratchet always says about repairs."

"He is very wise," Jetfire said. His hand went to his own neglected cube. Yes. He should refuel. He took a sip. Perhaps he could go back to the station. And…tell Sixshot he was going there. And they could meet again and…settle things. Somehow. One wing twitched.

"I'd come with you," First Aid volunteered.

Jetfire spluttered, his half-formed fantasy shattering. He tried to clear his intakes, placing the cube unsteadily back on the table.

"Oh!" First Aid jumped up, hands poised to do something to help, but not quite finding what, "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Jetfire coughed. He smiled sheepishly. "Amazing I managed to refuel all that time on my own, isn't it?"

"I-I never doubted you," First Aid said, shyly. His hand moved, suddenly, wiping a droplet of energon from Jetfire's cheek.

Jetfire stiffened, seeing innocence and helpfulness and something even under that—a wistful longing. No. He couldn't. First Aid was small, and fragile, physically and emotionally, his fingers tiny and gentle—too small, too gentle—on Jetfire's cheek. And he thought he knew Jetfire—they all thought they knew—and though First Aid was wrong, though Jetfire knew he could never live inside the small shell they had of him, Jetfire didn't want First Aid to be the first, the only one, hurt when that realization imploded.

Something ran cold through Jetfire's systems, and for the first time he felt…tainted.


	16. Arrangements

Sixshot had to wait until the next standard rotational cycle before he had a chance. Blot had grabbed him right off the practice range, and dragged him back to their quarters, where they had had some…contest that involved many cubes of energon and attempting to bounce a ball into one. He'd sat it out, insisting that he didn't play games, but somehow, and he was just a little fuzzy on the 'how' right now, Cutthroat and Rippersnapper had convinced him it was less of a game and more of a test of skill and…that was most of what he remembered of the previous recharge cycle.

Other than that he really needed to convince Sinnertwin that sometimes—sometimes—teeth were a bad thing. Especially after Banzaitron's little warning.

He leaned his back against the wall of the washrack, letting warm cleanser pour over his armor numb frame, the blue-purple…whatever that Blot oozed sheeting of his white thigh.

He hit his comm. "Jetfire."

A long silence. Sixshot verified that the comm channel was open. "…Sixshot." Something in the voice Sixshot couldn't read.

"Bad time."

"No! No. It's…not a bad time."

Sixshot waited for an explanation.

"I, uh…I didn't think you'd actually comm." The note of shy desire Sixshot remembered so well. Even over all this distance, his systems purred. He could feel the smooth plates of Jetfire's broad wings under his hands—or wanted to. And Sixshot did not…'want'.

Not very well, at any rate.

"Said I would."

A shy sound, like he feared to disagree. "No, you didn't. You said you couldn't talk."

Sixshot grunted acknowledgment, stepping forward into the spray of cleanser, tilting his head to allow cleanser into the gaps in his throat armor. "Implied."

Jetfire gave a soft laugh. "I did not think you…implied."

Sixshot blinked his optics under the spray. "Not very well, apparently."

"Ah, so there is something you do not excel at?" Almost in spite of himself, the strange, shy teasing tone crept into his voice.

Sixshot growled back, but without malice. He'd…missed this somehow. Even more than the physical contact, the lack of which now burned in his systems like some sort of hot energon. "You wanted something," he prompted. His memory brought him their last exchange. He turned his head to the ground, letting the cleanser slide down the back of his neck, glossing the vertical stabilizers above his shoulders. Jetfire had a fascination with them, and right now, Sixshot would have allowed the touch, for whatever pleasure it would have brought the shuttle.

The voice grew sober. "Yes." A host of meaning trembled in the syllable.

Sixshot waited. He grabbed a cleansing rag, popping open his interface hatch to scrub his equipment. He winced as the cleanser burned against his module, feeling nothing but a strange curiosity. What was Jetfire doing?

"I…," Jetfire hesitated, then the words seemed to gush out of him. "I want to see you. Please. Just once more."

Sixshot stopped, his systems tearing in two wildly different directions. The thought—just the thought—of Jetfire's armor under his hands, the wings shivering with desire, optics shining with something Sixshot couldn't even name, set his systems afire, and strained at his already limited impulse control. Even after a night with the Terrorcons.

The other direction was caution: the first time when the Autobots had shown up he knew Jetfire had nothing to do with. He had seen the innocence, the pain, in Jetfire's optics there on the ramp of the shuttle. But again?

"Trap."

"No! No. I swear it. I just…," the voice trailed off, then, very softly, "I don't know how to go on."

Sixshot froze. He had no ability, and he knew it, to read the currents under the words. He could barely understand his own thoughts, and…whatever this was below thoughts but somehow above the drives he had been using to distract himself. "Risky," he said, finally. For both of them, and in more ways than an ambush.

"Yes," Jetfire sounded disappointed. "But…I can be at the asteroid station. Alone." He blurted a time, almost sounding surprised himself. "I can be there," he said, the tone ringing with false confidence. And then, almost a whisper, "You…don't have to decide now."

Sixshot struggled for something to say. He didn't even know what he was thinking, what he was feeling, much less how to put it into words.

"I'm sorry," Jetfire said, hastily. "It was a stupid idea."

"Jetf—" The line went dead. Sixshot frowned, behind his mask, cleanser raining down upon his sudden, unaccustomed uncertainty.

[***]

He had promised, told Sixshot he would be there. Even though it was a stupid idea, even though he was mortified he'd suddenly given voice to what had been, till then, merely a fantasy, he had to go. To know. He had to keep his word, even if he doubted Sixshot would show. Because there was a chance. There was a chance. And if Sixshot went and he was not there…it was the end. Of everything.

"Yes," he said, he hoped calmly, to Optimus. "In our haste to depart, I'm afraid I left many of my notes there, and more than a few in-progress projects that I might be able to salvage." He clung to the truth—this part of the truth. He would not lie.

He would try not to.

Optimus looked down at the datapad. Jetfire had written the mission specs himself, dredging up old knowledge from the vorns when he'd led the Calabi-Yau expedition. He tried not to ruffle at the way that Optimus looked…impressed. He was not a warrior, yes. That did not mean he did not know how to lead.

Or at least, how to do the paperwork.

"You might want company." An offer, for a start. Jetfire knew it would escalate.

"Thank you but…that isn't necessary." His first refusal. He had made a list of possible objections, and his responses. Determined to make it right, trying to compensate for his weakness with overpreparation.

"First Aid has expressed interest in—"

"No," Jetfire said, sharply, too sharply. He winced. So much for the lists. Not First Aid. No. If Sixshot did show up…. "I mean, I can handle it easily myself."

"It might be lonely." The same point, just worded differently, more targeted.

"I have been alone before," Jetfire said, drawing himself up.

"But," Optimus said, optics tilting with sympathy Jetfire did not deserve, "You are revisiting a place with…troubling memories." Jetfire heard the hesitation over the adjective.

"It is best that I go alone. I have," Jetfire paused, cycling a vent of air, "some dignity."

Optimus nodded. "Well, if not First Aid, is there anyone you would choose to accompany you?" Thinking, apparently that First Aid was the problem.

First Aid and his strange affection for Jetfire was a problem. Just not the problem. Jetfire shook his head.

"Perhaps Ratchet? Prowl?...myself?"

Jetfire blinkered his optics, feeling his control slipping. He wanted to do this. It had to be alone. It wouldn't work if someone came with him, if Optimus pushed the point. He had to get this right. "No," he said, quietly. "You and Ratchet and Prowl are needed here. And while my projects can be useful, they are not immediately high priority." He steeled himself at the risk. He'd calculated that it would work. "I would rather not go than take a mission-essential mech from where he is needed." He tried not to hold his ventilation. An ultimatum he'd realized it would come to. Because it had to. He either went alone or there was just…no point. And not going at all was better than going with someone who might attack Sixshot, or…be attacked by Sixshot. It was a reality he didn't want to face.

He could feel Optimus measuring him, as though on some scale that worked in unfamiliar increments. And the balance of the room seemed to tilt, as though the ground were tipping against him. He felt vertigo, everything slipping out of his grasp. He cycled a tense, nervous ventilation. "Optimus," he said, wincing at the quaver in his voice. "I cannot explain it, but this is something I must do. For myself."

Truth, but a grey, slippery one.

Optimus nodded, slowly, handing the datapad back across the console like a sacred thing. "Of course. I understand." He pushed to his feet, but even so, Jetfire loomed over him. "And Jetfire?" His voice was rich with sympathy. "I trust you."

Oh.

I don't trust myself. "Thank you," Jetfire said solemnly, an agony of hope and deceit warring within him, knowing what trust he was breaking, and what he swore, swore he would not. "I will not betray your trust."


	17. Meeting

Jetfire sighed. The parabolic vector window had closed cycles ago and he was just going to have to come to terms with the fact that Sixshot was not coming. He'd sounded wary enough on the comm, and Jetfire honestly couldn't blame him. It would be a perfect set-up if Sixshot were that weak. And if Jetfire hadn't wanted it more than anything. Just to see, just to settle, just to know.

But Sixshot was not weak, and Jetfire, it seemed, would have to suffer on the edge of unknowing forever. Make his own peace with his unsettled spark.

His wings drooped as he headed back to the small shuttle. So much deceit and…it hadn't paid off. No, wait, that was a wrong thought. Deceit was deceit whether or not it had achieved its ends. His morals were…so messed up. He had a lot of thinking to do—he hoped when he put the shuttle on autopilot, his cortex would find the time and the will to start sorting through the morass.

His feet clanked on the deck of the ramp. He gave one last, lingering look over the greenish calcite stone of the asteroid. No sign of any life but his. Foolishness, to think he'd turn to see Sixshot standing there—quiet, enigmatic, aloof.

His hand reached to tap the keypad that raised the ramp, and suddenly he felt a grip like iron around the wrist, squeezing, twisting, pulling it. Jetfire found himself driven forward by the pain in his strained servos, his cheek striking the wall in front of him. His vid-feed blanked from the impact.

"Sixshot," he said, his voice muffled by the wall in front of him, its cool kiss of metal soothing against his suddenly heated plating.

That gruff, too familiar laugh, and the feel of the Decepticon's chassis heavy against his wings. "Should kill you now."

Yes, Jetfire thought. And I won't fight you. It would make everything so much simpler. "I wasn't followed. This isn't a trap." Please, he added, believe me. I'd never do anything to hurt you. Optimus had given his word, and even then, Jetfire thought, I doubted. Even then, I double checked. This is how far I have fallen.

"Know that. Tracked you in." The grip tightened on his wrist.

Oh. Of course. Also how he'd gotten onto the ship, no doubt. "I, please. I just wanted to talk to you."

A long moment. "So talk."

"I…can I turn around? Please? I want to see you."

Another moment, which Jetfire realized, for the first time, was hesitation. Sixshot was unsure of himself. Was it a victory? Or a sign he had damaged something wild and fierce? The hand twisted his wrist up higher behind his back, anterior shoulder servos whining at the strain, and Jetfire felt a blazing heat like tongue of flame across his upper wing edge. Sixshot's…mouth? What else could be that hot, that insistent? What else could make his net shudder with a scalding rush of desire like that?

And then the hand released him, and the heat on his wing was gone, and by the time he turned around, Sixshot had composed himself entirely, inscrutable, mask over his face, arms folded across the green chassis. Like a wall, blocking his spark.

"Thank you," Jetfire said.

"Talk." The red optics bored into him, so unlike the blue clear pools of the Autobots, which seemed to want to receive. The red optics seemed to want to do, to move, to take.

And he wanted to be taken. Always had. It was just…ridiculous at his age, at his size. He felt ridiculous. Starscream had loved the idea, almost too much—that the idea of Jetfire, his size, his latent power, was more alluring than the shuttle himself.

And now, given his chance, Jetfire found that words failed him again, only this time because he had too much he wanted to say and an awareness of how very little time they had. He would never take time for granted again. He held his hands out, white and open, palms upward. No threat—not that he ever had been. "The rescue—I didn't know about it. I didn't even think." He dropped his head. "I just…didn't want you to think I would do that to you. Be-betray you." His hands curled, helpless.

Sixshot tilted his head.

"I-I'm a terrible soldier," Jetfire added, lamely. "It's why they put me in R&D to begin with." He raised his optics, face flat with the agony of the truth, bracing for Sixshot's scorn.

"Enough killers already," Sixshot said.

"I just," Jetfire moved, scrubbing a hand over his face, stopping when he saw the subtle tension in the Phase Sixer's frame. "Sorry," he said. "I just," he shrugged. "I don't know what to do." So he'd come, and dragged Sixshot out here, into danger, into mutual risk, because…he didn't know. It seemed the most selfish thing he could have done.

And yet…Sixshot came. Despite the risks he knew more clearly than Jetfire did, despite his own life, his own faction, he came.

"Sixshot, may I ask a question?"

A curt nod.

"Why did you come?"

A calculated shrug. "In the area."

Jetfire waited. Sixshot had done this to him enough—swathed in silence until words forced themselves from Jetfire's vocalizer. Although…Sixshot didn't normally have to wait that long. Words seemed primed to spill whenever the white mech was around.

Sixshot's frame grew tenser, the stabilizers behind his shoulders almost vibrating. And then he moved, a blur of white so fast that Jetfire's optics couldn't track until the hands were on him, one around his throat, the other in the divide of his wings.

"Dangerous," Sixshot murmured.

Jetfire said nothing coherent, a soft sound escaping his control of more than half desire. Sixshot's hands on him were hard with need, and seemed to glow white hot across his net, yearning coalescing to something close to pain. Beloved pain. He leaned into it, his optics wide and earnest, his own hands clutching the green shoulders for balance. "Not dangerous," he breathed. "Not to you." His words were uncertain, begging to be true. He didn't want to bring any harm to Sixshot, directly or indirectly. He didn't want to be dangerous.

Yet…Sixshot was dangerous to him. He had no worry, no fear that the Phase Sixer would kill him. Not even now, when no one would find his body, but…there were other dangers, and before those, he was prostrate, helpless.

And Jetfire opened himself to the danger, welcoming it as a wanted companion. He could feel Sixshot's aroused EM field, unique, vibrant, twisting, almost alive, against him, and it filled a void, as though he had been flying too long in space and had just re-entered atmosphere.

Jetfire didn't know what to do, but he knew what he wanted to do: he laid his head down against the shoulder, nuzzling against the vertical stabilizer. His arms slid around the shoulders, pressing himself against the other mech, his canopy slick against Sixshot's armor, clutching to Sixshot as though hoping to eradicate the distance between them.

"Dangerous," Sixshot repeated, the word rumbling against Jetfire's chassis, his hands greedy on Jetfire's wings. Jetfire melted against him, giving in to the touch—places he could not manage to touch himself, in his own, pitiful attempts to keep himself sated. Poor substitute, especially in the presence of the real thing—Sixshot's hands heedless, unrelenting against him, flaming lines of touch across his armor, his net; Sixshot's EM field pulsing hard against his; even the smell of him—the ionized tang of alien oil, the scent of his heated enamel, of some foreign alloy, combined to an intoxicant that swept Jetfire away.

Jetfire lifted his head from Sixshot's throat. "What should we—" Jetfire's words were silenced as Sixshot's hands joined behind Jetfire's back, jerking him closer, fingers curling around Jetfire's lower wings.

"No questions," Sixshot growled, adding, "Yet." He yanked down on the wing edges, forcing Jetfire downward. Jetfire sank to his knees, Sixshot dropping with him.

Jetfire allowed Sixshot to push him into position, along the hard decking of the shuttle, the hands reintroducing themselves to his frame, down his legs, around his torso, teasing along the bevel of his canopy. Jetfire shuddered, his own hands resting on Sixshot's shoulders, merely going along for the ride, curling over the armor as his body twisted and writhed under the white, merciless hands.

Jetfire could feel Sixshot's optics on him, like a hand of fire, sliding over his body, feeding on his lust. He didn't know why he wanted this, and he knew even less what he thought doing this one more time would do—make separation more painful. Dig this addiction's claws in deeper. He belonged back with the Autobots. He could be safe, and adored by First Aid.

But just thinking of the smaller jet twisted something in him, something large and dark recoiling from the innocent optics, that brightened and blazed when he looked at Sixshot, met the orange-red gaze licking at him like flames.

"I want you," he murmured, a confession, a revelation, a choice.

Sixshot met his gaze with the flat affect Jetfire had come to find so strangely soothing. "Have me." There were layers of meaning there that Sixshot seemed to hear, and then duck away from, lowering his head to rest against Jetfire's chassis, head turned to the side as if trying to hear the revolution of Jetfire's spark. One hand roamed over the chassis, palm flat curling to fingertip brushes, to trace the seam of Jetfire's interface hatch.

Jetfire sighed, his frame trembling, arching into the touch, wanting the touch, the intimacy, wanting every barrier between them torn down. Wishing he could eradicate the largest barrier between them—faction, belief—but right now…he would take this.

Whatever that said about him, he felt purer for admitting it.

He stroked his hand over the white helm on his chest, trying to memorize the contours, the feel of the armor. This might be the last time. It felt like they were closing a circle and the thought tore at Jetfire even as part of him wanted this endless circle of longing and doubt and worry and denial to be closed.

Fingers, somehow more practiced than he remembered, opened his hatch, stroking down his module, curling the cables around one finger in a lazy spiral. "Oh," he said, the word like a song, a single pure note of desire. Sixshot rumbled against him, a baritone counterpoint, and his fingers moved to circle the sealing collar of his access port.

The hand withdrew, rubbing the module between fingers and palm, and then Jetfire felt the solid small click of his module connecting home in Sixshot's port. His datastream pulsed, the ebb and swell wave of his kind. And Sixshot's armor might be numb, but his underlying systems were exquisitely sensitive, and Jetfire could feel the taut vibration against him.

Their hands collided, reaching for Sixshot's module, both clumsy with need and longing too deep for laughter. Jetfire twisted his rib struts, anything he could do to diminish the distance between them, holding himself rigid until he felt the module seat against him and Sixshot's datastream, its hard, insistent pulses, against him. They both seemed to sigh, simultaneously, contrary to the hitching of their physical desires, as though something had been settled, some pressure relieved.

Sixshot clambered up Jetfire's body, and their bodies joined, hands roaming and insistent, wanting and owning, rolling over and over. Sixshot tilted his head, opening his throat, and Jetfire found himself burying his face in the gap, his kisses going swiftly—too swiftly—from gentle licks and nips to insistent bites and a raw scraping nuzzle. A force, a freedom he had never had with another mech, the feral force that had blossomed under the Phase Sixer's attentions. All the while their datastreams danced, intently, intensely, skirting around each other, swirling in a rhythmic display of color and light and sound and sensation.

Jetfire's body snapped into a rigid shudder, once, twice, as Sixshot's datastream reached synchrony, thrusting them into overload, Sixshot's hands digging into the bend in his wings, bunching the metal. Jetfire tasted energon, hot and dark and rich from where his dentae rent a fuel line.

A hard hand cupped his head there for a long moment, Sixshot refusing to let him move, apologize. Jetfire lay, shuddering, in the circle of Sixshot's arms, the intoxicating sweetness bubbling over his glossa.

Sixshot released him, slowly, twitching as Jetfire licked the damaged hose in mute apology. Sixshot's hands smoothed the backspan of Jetfire's wings. Jetfire tilted his optics up, aware of the energon tingling on his lips. Sixshot gave an amused growl, wiping his mouth with one rough thumb. Jetfire thought back to First Aid, and his touch on Jetfire's cheek, and how different they felt—one welcome, almost like a touch from himself, the other distant, foreign, merely reminding him of his boundaries and differences.

"Thinking," Sixshot said. A question, and a judgment. Jetfire searched the orange-red optics for some hint, seeing only some depths he could never fathom. They called to him, like a mystery, like a scientific discovery, and something more.

It was that, or the overload, or the strange intoxication of Sixshot's energon in his mouth, but Jetfire found words pouring a torrent from his mouth, powerless to stop them. Even as he spoke, his optics widened in a sort of mortified fear. But, he thought, this was the end, the closing of the circle, and perhaps it is better to leave no words unsaid, no matter how foolish, no matter how childish and raw.

"I want...to get overcharged together and laugh at stupid nonsensical things. I want to fly with you. Why did we never fly?" His hand brushed the stabilizer. "I want to watch you at work, yes, even _your_ work, because it's you, and you in your element is…beautiful to me. And I want to wake up touching you. And I want to explore all the different ways we can interface. And I want to see all six of your modes and give them silly nicknames that make you laugh when I'm not with you, and I want to bring you little presents, small things, just to surprise you, just so you can have something. So you don't forget. And I want to kiss you, on the mouth." His fingers traced the center line of the mask, feeling a burning heat behind the metal. "And I want to feel you all over, to know every inch of your plating blind. Bu-but most of all I want you to be happy." Jetfire winced at the selfishness of the next words, even as they poured from his mouth. "And…I want to be the one that makes you happy." Jetfire finally clamped his mouth shut over the desperate pathetic torrent of words. As if it were merely the matter of enough words to fill the distances, the differences, between them.

He dropped back onto the floor, letting his gaze fall, too ashamed to meet Sixshot's optics. The moment stretched, both of them silent, still, wrapped in themselves. Jetfire's hands fell back by his sides, as if he had ceded his right to touch.

And then one white hand caught Jetfire's chin, turning it, raising it, firm, inexorable. Their optics met, and a thumb feathered gently over Jetfire's mouth, brushing his lip plating and cheek, the gaze meeting his ardent and intense.

"Yes."

And the word was a gift and everything between them, and it held all the answers. How? When? Why? It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except this thing, this nameless thing that would have glared at the name 'love', that made them both no longer feel lost, made them both, for these moments, and in every way that mattered, free.


End file.
